“Hi, I’m Plenty,†said Lana Wood to
Sean Connery’s James Bond at the gaming tables of Las Vegas in Diamonds Are Forever (1971). “Plenty O’Toole.â€Â Glancing at her cleavage, Bond wittily
deadpanned, “But of course you are.â€Â
With this small exchange audiences were introduced to one of the most
popular Bond girls to ever hit the screen.Â
As Plenty, Lana Wood was finally able to step out of the shadow of her
sister Natalie Wood. On screen for only
a few scenes, she almost steals the movie with her amusing performance and
remains forever remembered for this role.Â
“Isn’t that bizarre,†exclaims Wood with a laugh. “I’m only in the movie for three
minutes!Â
Lana Wood was born Svetlana Zacharenko
Gurdin in Santa Monica, California. She
followed her older sister into the acting profession and made her film debut at
eight years old in John Ford’s classic western The Searchers (1956). Wood
received good notices and went on to appear in a few television dramas with
Jack Lemmon and Charlton Heston, among others.Â
But unlike Natalie, Lana didn’t want to act as a child and she waited
until she was eighteen before re-starting her career with an episode of Dr. Kildare. More alluring and voluptuous than Natalie, Lana
found herself typed cast in sexpot roles.Â
After playing a coed in The Girls
on the Beach (1965), Wood was signed to play sexy Eula Harker in the
short-lived soap opera The Long, Hot
Summer (1965-66). When the series
was cancelled midway through its first season, 20th Century-Fox immediately
moved Lana Wood into their hit soap opera Peyton
Place. As Sandy Webber, a slinky
temptress from the wrong side of the tracks, Wood was an immediate hit with the
viewers and played the role for close to two years.
After playing a swinging
bachelorette in For Singles Only
(1968) and a mini-skirted biker babe in Free
Grass (1969), Wood posed semi-nude for Playboy
magazine. Her pictorial appeared in the
April 1971 issue along accompanied by some of her poetry. These photos indirectly helped Wood land her
most famous role of Plenty O’Toole.  “I
didn’t have to audition per se for this role,†recalls Lana. “My dear friend [writer] Tom Mankiewicz told
me that Cubby Broccoli was looking for an actress to play this character named
Plenty O’Toole. Tom thought I would be
perfect for it. He asked me if I would
meet with Cubby. I said, ‘Absolutely!’ I was en route to do a movie called A Place Called Today in New York. Before leaving for that, I went in to chat
with Cubby who was adorable! I tried to
look as tall as humanly possible because Tom had told me that they were
thinking of Plenty O’Toole as this giant of a woman in every way. For me that wasn’t easy—I’m only five feet,
four inches—but those were the days of hot pants and really high heels. I
didn’t hear anything until I started filming the other picture. I was thrilled to get the part!â€
In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), secret agent James Bond (Sean Connery)
is assigned to pose as a diamond smuggler, leading him and jewel thief Tiffany
Case (Jill St. John), from Amsterdam to Las Vegas, in pursuit of fifty thousand
carats of diamonds. Bond meets bar girl
Plenty O’Toole and her cleavage at a crap tables in a Vegas casino. After introducing herself to Bond who has been
winning he takes her up to his room.Â
Their tryst is interrupted as thugs try to kill Bond and toss Plenty out
the fifteen-story window. (“We filmed
this at night. I was topless. The crowd got a nice view of me in nothing
but a pair of pale blue panties.â€)Â
Fortunately, Plenty lands in the hotel’s pool. Unfortunately, a short time later she is
discovered murdered and floating face down in Tiffany’s pool.
Lana strikes a cheesecake pose in the 1970s.
Remembering working with Sean
Connery, Lana remarks, “He is very charming and attentive. He was very relaxed and
was very easy to work with. As long as
we did things in a rapid pace so he could get out to golf then he was
fine. But I had no problems working with
Sean at all. Later on we heard that he
was battling with the producers during the shoot. If that was true it wasn’t in front of the
cast or crew.â€Â Lana also admits to
having a brief “interlude†with her sexy leading man.
With the special edition DVD
release, fans got to see a number of Wood’s scenes that were excised from the
final print due to “running time.â€Â One
shows the sexual attraction growing between Bond and Plenty as they dine before
going up to his hotel room and another featured Plenty sneaking back into
Bond’s room only to find him in bed with Tiffany. “I was flabbergasted that they cut all this
out,†exclaims Lana. “I didn’t even
realize it until I had come back from a world tour to promote the film. I went to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in
Hollywood to watch it with a friend because I was so busy I never had time to
see it. I literally bent over to get
some popcorn as the thugs threw me out the window and by the time I had
straightened up my character was dead. I
thought, ‘Wow, all of a sudden I have this little part.’ I actually asked why they cut most of my scenes
and I was told that they didn’t have much relevance to the plot.â€Â Not so.Â
These missing scenes finally explain how and why Plenty O’Toole is found
murdered in Tiffany Case’s swimming pool wearing her wig. The assassins mistook her for Tiffany and killed
her.Â
It was foolish to cut these scenes
and considering how much better Wood was in the movie than Jill St. John who clad
in an ill-fitting bikini throughout most of the movie gives a shrill
performance (though the overrated redhead incredulously keeps making the Top 10
Bond Girls of all-time polls), the producers probably kicked themselves for
shortening Wood’s screen time.
- Read more about Bond girls and
other spy chicks in Tom Lisanti’s Film
Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973 (co-authored by Louis Paul) available at www.sixtiescinema.com. .