Lois Maxwell

Maxwell was born in Kitchener, Ontario, to a Ruth Adelaide Wells, a nurse, and William Victor Hooker, a teacher.[2][3] Maxwell was raised in Toronto and attended Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute. She gained her first job working as a waitress at Canada's largest and most luxurious summer resort, Bigwin Inn, on Bigwin Island in Lake of Bays, Ontario.

During World War II she ran away from home, aged 15,[2] to join the Canadian Women's Army Corps, a unit formed to release men for combat duties. CWAC personnel were secretaries, vehicle drivers, and mechanics, who performed every conceivable noncombat duty. Maxwell quickly became part of the Army Show in Canada. Later, as part of the Canadian Auxiliary Services Entertainment Unit, she was posted to the United Kingdom, where she performed music and dance numbers to entertain the troops, often appearing alongside Canadian comedians Wayne and Shuster.

Maxwell's true age was discovered when the group reached London. To avoid her being repatriated to Canada, she was discharged; she subsequently enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,[2] where she became friends with fellow student Roger Moore. Moore was later her on-screen colleague, in the James Bond film series, from Live and Let Die (1973) to A View to a Kill (1985).

Moving to Hollywood at the age of 20, Maxwell won the actress Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in the Shirley Temple drama That Hagen Girl (1947).[4] In 1949, she participated in a Life magazine photo layout, in which she posed with another up-and-coming actress, Marilyn Monroe. It was at this time that she changed her surname from Hooker to Maxwell, a name borrowed from a ballet dancer friend.[5] The rest of her family also took this name.[6]

Most of Maxwell's work consisted of minor roles in B films.[4] Tiring of Hollywood, she moved back to Europe, living in Rome for five years (1950–1955).[7] There she made a series of films, and at one point became an amateur race driver.[5] One of her Italian films was an adaptation of the opera Aida (1953), in which Maxwell played a leading role, lip-synching to another woman's vocals and appearing in several scenes with the then unknown Sophia Loren.

While visiting Paris, she met her future husband, TV executive Peter Marriott. They married in 1957 and moved to London, where their daughter Melinda and son Christian were both born (in 1958 and 1959). Maxwell appeared with Patrick McGoohan in the British television series Danger Man as his accomplice in the 1959 episode "Position of Trust".

During the 1960s, Maxwell appeared in many TV series and in films outside the Bond series, in both the UK and Canada. She guest-starred in two episodes of The Saint[5] and later in one episode of The Persuaders!;[7] in both of which she appeared alongside Roger Moore. She provided the voice of Atlanta for the Supermarionation science-fiction children's series Stingray[5] and was the star of the CBC series Adventures in Rainbow Country in the 1970s.

Maxwell had a minor role as a nurse in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962).[8] In 1963 Maxwell played a machine gun-firing nurse in the series The Avengers (episode "The Little Wonders", which was first aired on 11 January 1964). She had a guest appearance in an episode of the ITC series The Baron ("Something for a Rainy Day", 1965), as an insurance investigator.

Maxwell lobbied for a role in the James Bond film Dr. No (1962), for her husband had suffered a heart attack and they needed the money. Director Terence Young, who had once turned her down on the grounds that she "looked like she smelled of soap", offered her either Miss Moneypenny or Bond's girlfriend, Sylvia Trench, but she was uncomfortable with the idea of a revealing scene outlined in the screenplay. The role as M's secretary guaranteed just two days' work at a rate of £100 per day; Maxwell supplied her own clothes for the filming.[9]

Maxwell appeared in the Italian spy spoof Operation Kid Brother in 1967, with Bernard Lee (who played M) and Sean Connery's brother Neil.[9] In the same year she portrayed Moneypenny in a made-for-TV special, Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond, in which she co-starred with Kate O'Mara and Desmond Llewelyn.

The role of Moneypenny was nearly recast after Maxwell demanded a pay raise for Diamonds Are Forever (1971). However, the producers felt it important to incorporate the regular character, and it was ultimately decided during production to add the scene where, disguised as a customs officer, she gives Bond his travel documents at the Port of Dover. Maxwell and Sean Connery filmed their lines separately and were not present together for the short scene.[10][11] Moneypenny's undercover policewoman's cap disguises the hair Maxwell had already dyed in preparation for another part.[9]

Maxwell stayed on as Moneypenny when her former classmate Roger Moore assumed the role of 007 in Live and Let Die (1973). She reprised her character, weeping for the death of Bond, in a short scene with Lee in the French comedy Bons baisers de Hong Kong (1975).

During the filming of A View to a Kill (1985), her final appearance as Moneypenny, producer Cubby Broccoli pointed out to her that they were the only cast or crew members from Dr. No who had not yet left the series. Maxwell asked that Moneypenny be killed off, but Broccoli recast the role instead.[9]

According to author Tom Lisanti, Maxwell's Moneypenny was seen as an "anchor", and her flirtatious relationship with Bond provided the films with dramatic realism and humanism; for Moneypenny, Bond was "unobtainable", freeing the characters to make outrageous sexual double entendres.

Maxwell's husband died in 1973, having never fully recovered from his heart attack in the 1960s. Maxwell subsequently returned to Canada,[7] settling in Fort Erie, Ontario, where she lived on Oakes Drive. She spent her summers at a cottage outside Espanola, Ontario, where she wrote a weekly column for the Toronto Sun under the pseudonym "Miss Moneypenny" from 1979 until 1994,[7] and became a businesswoman working in the textile industry. In 1994, she returned to the UK once again to be nearer to her daughter Melinda, retiring to a cottage in Frome, Somerset. A plaque has been placed on her home there by the Frome Society of Local Study.[12]

Following surgery for bowel cancer in 2001, Maxwell moved to Perth, Western Australia, to live with her son Christian's family. She remained there, working on her autobiography, until her death at Fremantle Hospital on 29 September 2007.

Of his friend's death, Sir Roger Moore said to BBC Radio 5 Live, "It's rather a shock. She was always fun and she was wonderful to be with and was absolutely perfect casting [...] It was a great pity that, after I moved out of Bond, they didn't take her on to continue in the Timothy Dalton films. I think it was a great disappointment to her that she had not been promoted to play M. She would have been a wonderful M."[1]