Honor Blackman, the actor best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and had a career spanning eight decades.
As well as her parts in The Avengers and the Bond film Goldfinger, Blackman played the vengeful goddess Hera in Jason and the Argonauts and Laura West in the 1990s sitcom The Upper Hand. She appeared in theatrical productions including The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady and Cabaret.
Born in east London to a middle-class family – her father was a civil servant – Blackman credited the elocution lessons she received as a birthday gift as allowing her to progress in her acting career. After studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she had small roles in films and TV shows such as Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958) and the Edgar Wallace vigilante series The Four Just Men (1959-60).
Blackman’s proficiency in martial arts helped her land what became her signature role, that of Pussy Galore, the glamorous villain assisting in Goldfinger’s plot to rob Fort Knox. Released in 1964, Goldfinger was the third Bond film and was a global hit. However, Blackman later told she regretted leaving The Avengers to play the part. “I walked away at the wrong moment. They were just going from black and white to colour, they were starting to get real film money.”
The actress behind the famous Bond Girl Pussy Galore was a high-ranking judoka who published her own book on self-defense the year after Goldfinger came out.
The book, a compilation of judo and karate-influenced techniques demonstrated in photos and described in text by the trio, was originally intended as a bit of a novelty item and a way to capitalize on her fame as Britain’s first action heroine. But it ended up striking a chord with her audience. Not only had the young women who idolized Cathy Gale never seen anyone who looked anything like themselves so capably handling themselves on screen—they’d never had anything like her book made for them, either. Although its techniques might seem quaint or even laughable by today’s standards, her book made history as one of the first of its kind to be made specifically for women. Bruce Lee was reported to have a copy in his extensive library of martial arts books.
A half century after she first stepped into a dojo she declared :
“It was on Panton Street and Joe and Doug Robinson were my instructors, and they said it was down in the basement. I arrived at the premises and started to go down the steps… and the smell! Everybody’s sweating down there. And I got to the bottom and all of the mats were damp because everybody sweats and they’re breaking falls and banging like mad. And I fondly thought—quite rightly, I think—that I might have a private lesson. Not a bit of it! I was in there with the chaps. And there I was and I had to put gear on and everything, and they’d never had a woman before, so there wasn’t anywhere for me to change.”
Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-Defence became popular enough to merit a U.S. release the following year and a profile in the May 20, 1966 issue of Life Magazine. “She encourages pretty young things to take up judo purely as a precautionary measure,” the article, ripe with mid-’60s sexism, explains. “If a man were going to attack someone, he’d be a fool to pick me,” she says. “So I’ve never had to use judo in real life, though it’s a relief to know I could. But it’s great for the figure, good for the nerves and nice to have tucked away for disasters.”
Although Blackman had few chances to show off her skills on the screen or page after Goldfinger and the book, she remained vigilant in both her own self-defense and her lifelong quest against bullying.
Her first book has just been re-edited in France :
Defend yourself in style. Self-defense manual (…) by Honor Blackman. Translated from English by Lou Vago. Le Cherche Midi, 120 pp., 15 €.
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Le journal du peintre 2 