In Memoriam, Sean Connery

I learned that Sean Connery had passed away yesterday and only this morning thought to check to see if I'd actually listed him on our separate page that notes the military service of people famous for something else.  I actually hadn't, so I went and added it.

Thomas Sean Connery

Sean Connery was justifiably famous as an actor, although in my view the James Bond series of films unfortunately seemed to define his career.  Even upon his death the BBC emphasized those films, all of which I've seen, which are far from all of them and none of the more recent ones, are cheesy and superficial (the Bond franchise that is, not Connery's portrayal of Bond).  Connery was, of course, the first Bond, but went on to a large number of excellent films of all types.

Connery joined the Royal Navy at age 16 and served until age 19, when he received a medical discharge due to an ulcer, a condition that was common in his family.

Category:  Actor

Date Added:  November 1, 2020

I'll be frank that I'm not one of those people who gets gushy about actors and actresses.  I figure their occupation is being an actor and that's to portray people they're not.  I don't care about their personal views on things. . . darned near anything, unless it really stands out for something notable or unusual.  So, for example, I don't care that Connery was a financial backer and member of the Scottish Nationalist Party, a party that I'm not a fan of.  I'm also not Scots, except remotely as a minority constituent of genetic background.  While most of my ancestors hailed form Ireland, with some being Ango Normans, and behind that a minority of my ancestry came from Westphalia and France, a small percentage came from Scotland through a family of jewelers who immigrated to Canada and New York. Their name was Murray.

Murray occurs as an Irish and Scottish last name, which isn't too surprising as the Irish and the Scottish originated as the same people had very close contacts for many years.  I note that, however, as there's a modern Irish connection with Scotland which is peculiarly the reverse of post Reformation connection of Scotland with Ireland, which is better known.  That connection came about due to the English crown settling Scottish Presbyterians in Northern Ireland as a buffer and species of religious invasion of Ireland, creating problems that last to this day.  The reverse was an economic migration to Scotland, and also to England, by the Irish that started in the mid 19th Century and continued up until the Irish Celtic Tiger era.  So, the Murray's I descend from may in fact be an Irish family that immigrated to Scotland and later to Canada and the United States.  I have no real way of knowing, but the fact that my family is uniformly Catholic makes me wonder.

That isn't really a clarifying point, however, as even though Scotland became virulent Presbyterian during the Reformation, it always retained a Catholic population.

I note all of that as Sean Connery's family is an interesting example of how this work.  Connery was a supporter of the Scottish Nationalist Party and was principally Scottish in ancestry, but his paternal great grandparents were Irish immigrants to Scotland and Connery's father, Joseph Connery, was Catholic.

Sean Connery is an interesting example of the Scotland of his times.  He went to work early, left that to join the Royal Navy, and then returned to blue collar employment for a time after leaving the Navy.  He came into acting tangentially, through fist working back stage and through working as a male model.

So he's interesting not only as an actor, but as an example of the 19th and 20th Century history of Scotland.  He also was an actor in a number of very good historical films, including A Bridge Too Far, The Hill, The Many Who Would Be King, and The Wind and the Lion, none of which I've reviewed to date, but all of which I should have.  And of course his portrayal as the Soviet submarine captain in The Hunt for Red October has become iconic.