The Economics Of Roger Moore, The Greatest James Bond Of Them All, It’s not a hard and fast rule, but when it comes to James Bond films, viewers generally like the individual they saw playing Bond first, the most. People of my father’s era often tend toward Sean Connery, younger fans speak most highly of Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, but in my case Roger Moore will always be the only Bond.
Moonraker wasn’t Moore’s first Bond picture, but since it was mine, it still brings back great memories. Moore has a grand resume that includes successful film and television franchises including The Saint and The Persuaders!, but he remains best known for his twelve-year stint as a suave, MI6 agent.
So while his work schedule is a bit more relaxed in light of his advancing age (86), Moore remains a very social person who seemingly knows everyone. He released a well-received memoir in 2009, another one focused on his time as Bond in 2012, and then his latest release is One Lucky Bastard: Tales From Tinsletown. To this day Moore has an office at the legendary Pinewood studios outside London, and as he’s still very much on the inside of the film business, his recall of film-business stories from the past and present represented an essential read for this reviewer.
As is always the case, no one reads the same book. Everyone gleans different insights from what’s on the page. In my case, this review will cover the economic ideas behind what’s been a highly interesting and glamourous life. Moore’s stories about the movie industry ably reveal the folly of excessive taxation, why worry over the wealth gap is wasted, the wonders of free trade, the essential importance of the much-demonized ‘1 percent’, and they arguably remind us yet again that we weaken Wall Street and the world of finance at our peril.
Considering the wealth gap, economists too often offer evidence-free assertions about the horrors of inequality. They say inequality sets the overall economy back, but never explain why. With good reason. In truth, rising inequality in terms of wealth is the surest signal that the lifestyle gap is being shrunk by the very individuals growing rich. More to the point, what the rich enjoy exclusively in the near term strongly signals what we’ll all eventually enjoy if markets are free. Moore writes that in 1939,
“I saw my first TV pictures on a tiny box with a fuzzy little screen….The local baker was the only person we knew who owned a TV set and it was so exciting to gather around it waiting for the valves to warm up and seeing the little picture emerge.”
Nowadays televisions aren’t just the ubiquitous norm, but thanks to innovators like the late Steve Jobs, many of us watch TV on our phones that we carry in our pockets. Jobs died a billionaire, and no doubt many of the shows we watch on television are produced by individuals worth many millions, but would any reader seriously give up the wonders of the moving picture so that inequality could shrink?
Moore himself hardly grew up well-to-do (he was the son of a policeman), but as evidenced by homes in places like Gstaad, Moore is quite rich today thanks to his success in TV and films. The person who excitedly watched a fuzzy television screen in 1939 was by 1949 being viewed at 8:30 pm on The Governess. Moore’s success has doubtless increased the wealth gap too, but would any reader seriously begrudge Moore his fortune? Those who decry the wealth gap explicitly suggest that the rich must “give back,” and while Moore travels the world for UNICEF, his wealth is a powerful signal that he gave an entertainment-starved public what it wanted in a pretty grand way.
The name Albert “Cubby” Broccoli is quite familiar to any Bond fan today, the late film producer grew very rich producing Bond films that portrayed lavish living, but can any reader say with a straight face that the wealth and glamour that Broccoli brought to the screen somehow hurt the 99.9% of the world not living like James Bond and his cohorts? Notable here is that per Moore the grandson of Italian immigrants in Broccoli “was born in April 1909 in a tenement block in Astoria, Queens,” and “didn’t enjoy a financially rich childhood, far from it.”
Rather than let what he didn’t have hold him back, Broccoli took advantage of being in the Land of Opportunity. In his mid-twenties he left his family’s farm and moved to Los Angeles. Life out there wasn’t easy at first, and as Moore notes, “Cubby sold hair products and Christmas trees to get by.” But thanks to introductions from a cousin, he got a job as an assistant on a film production, moved from there to a talent agency, then eventually moved into film production. The enormous popularity of the Bond franchise and Broccoli’s wealth speaks yet again to the truth that people grow rich by virtue of enriching the lives of others.
