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[00Twelve]

As this is the most appropriate thread for little neat things in the Bond universe (and I'm always happy to bring one of Dodges threads back to the top of the pack), I just noticed this little nugget:

Virginia Hey, who portrays Pushkin's lady in TLD, is actually credited on IMDB as Rubavitch! That would be the same Soviet version of Moneypenny featured in the Moore movies! Seems Moneypenny isn't the only secretary played by multiple actresses.

Not quite. The one in the Roger Moore movies was called RUBLEvitch. The character in The Living Daylights was originally supposed to be called Rublevitch who worked alongside her boss Gen. Alexis Gogol. But when Walter Gotell was too ill to play a large part in the film, his character was changed to Gen. Leonid Pushkin and Gogol was promoted to ambassador for Gotell's cameo appearance at the end of the film. (Hence the part between M and Bond in M's office about both of them knowing and working with Pushkin several times in the past. It would have carried more weight had the exchange been about Gogol as intended.) With the change from Gogol to Pushkin, the writers/producers opted to change the name of the Russian secretary as well, this time to the rather unimaginative name of Rubavitch.

I did know all that about Gotell and Rhys-Davies, and to be honest I had thought that the name was Rublevitch from the Moore movies. So it's a different character, but almost the same name? How inventive. Thanks for the clarification, though.

[Double-Oh Agent]

As this is the most appropriate thread for little neat things in the Bond universe (and I'm always happy to bring one of Dodges threads back to the top of the pack), I just noticed this little nugget:

Virginia Hey, who portrays Pushkin's lady in TLD, is actually credited on IMDB as Rubavitch! That would be the same Soviet version of Moneypenny featured in the Moore movies! Seems Moneypenny isn't the only secretary played by multiple actresses.

Not quite. The one in the Roger Moore movies was called RUBLEvitch. The character in The Living Daylights was originally supposed to be called Rublevitch who worked alongside her boss Gen. Alexis Gogol. But when Walter Gotell was too ill to play a large part in the film, his character was changed to Gen. Leonid Pushkin and Gogol was promoted to ambassador for Gotell's cameo appearance at the end of the film. (Hence the part between M and Bond in M's office about both of them knowing and working with Pushkin several times in the past. It would have carried more weight had the exchange been about Gogol as intended.) With the change from Gogol to Pushkin, the writers/producers opted to change the name of the Russian secretary as well, this time to the rather unimaginative name of Rubavitch.

I did know all that about Gotell and Rhys-Davies, and to be honest I had thought that the name was Rublevitch from the Moore movies. So it's a different character, but almost the same name? How inventive. Thanks for the clarification, though.

No problem.

Coming up with original names can be a problem in the Bond series. See Chang and Carter to name a couple. The name Chang (without a first name) appears in Moonraker, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Die Another Day while the name Carter (again without a first name) appears in The Spy Who Loved Me and Casino Royale. Is it really that hard to come up with an original name? It isn't any better in the novels either. There's a "Big Thumb" Chang in No Deals, Mr. Bond and the three Chang brothers in Zero Minus Ten. Billions of people in China and apparently they're all named Chang!