150 replies to this topic

[Double-Oh Agent]

My updated Felix Leiter list:

1. David Hedison
2. Bernie Casey
3. Jeffrey Wright
4. Cec Linder
5. Rik Van Nutter
6. Jack Lord
7. John Terry
8. Norman Burton

[right idea, wrong pussy]

My Felix list:

1. Bernie Casey (seemed the closest to being Bond's friend and comrade in arms, the way he was in the books)
2. Jeffrey Wright (very sharp, maybe the best actor in the role!)
3. Cec Linder (too old perhaps, but he was an understanding friend to Bond)
4. Norman Burton (Personable and slightly annoyed with Bond. He gave me a good laugh, even if he bears little resemlblance to Fleming's original)
5. David Hedison (He'd be at #3 if he'd just done LALD, where he was very good and fit the "friend of Bond" role, but he was just too old in LTK and his acting, like most of the production, was subpar)
6. Jack Lord (overrated in my opinion. He acts rather pretentious and seems to think he's the star of the show. His line reading is so stilted it's almost comedic)
7. John Terry (Just bland, he makes no impact whatsoever)
8. Rik Van Nutter (Seemed to think that he needed top do was to dress and act as cool as Bond in his role. It didn't work. At all.)

[MarcAngeDraco]

Jeffrey Wright's Felix was one of the few aspects of CR that disappointed me... Not bad, just woefully underutilized...

Hopefully he'll return with a larger role...

[TheLazenby]

Well, I'm including Michael Pate. He's a much a Felix Leiter as anyone else is... (And a British Leiter makes *that* much more sense than suddenly being black!)

1) David Hedison (who else?)
2) Cec Linder
3) Bernie Casey
4) Jack Lord
5) Norman Burton
6) Jeffrey Wright
7) John Terry
8) Michael Pate
9) Rik Van Nutter

[DaveBond21]

I went for the original and my favourite - Jack Lord.

Hedison was my 2nd choice. I liked Jeffrey Wright, and was also quite surprised how little he was in CR.

[Safari Suit]

Hedison followed by Casey, who is quite possibly the best thing about NSNA.

Wright has the potential to be the best Felix, but I don't think he's achieved it yet (through no fault of his own, or anyone really).

Edited by Safari Suit, 16 January 2007 - 12:43 PM.

[Four Aces]

1. Jeffrey Wright. I liked the minimalist role he played as Felix Leiter.

I can't really rank the others. I found the other Leiter portrayals to be a distraction in their respective movies, though in the novels they do not come off that way. This is a personality characteristic of me, as I do not believe in wing-man concepts. I also don't like Sancho Panza, Tonto, etc.

[Colton]

I liked these:
1. David Hedison, Licence to Kill
2. Jack Lord, Dr. No
3. John Terry, The Living Daylights
4. David Hedison, Live and Let Die
5. Rik Van Nutter, Thunderball
6. Jeffrey Wright, Casino Royale

I disliked these:
7. Cec Linder, Goldfinger
8. Bernie Casey, Never Say Never Again

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

David Hedison. The BEST FELIX EVER !!!

[Qwerty]

I liked these:
1. David Hedison, Licence to Kill
2. Jack Lord, Dr. No
3. John Terry, The Living Daylights
4. David Hedison, Live and Let Die
5. Rik Van Nutter, Thunderball
6. Jeffrey Wright, Casino Royale

I disliked these:
7. Cec Linder, Goldfinger
8. Bernie Casey, Never Say Never Again

Welcome to the CBn Forums.

[Agent 0015]

David Hedison is the best Felix Leiter.

[Hitokiri]

David Hedison is the best Felix Leiter.

I completely agree. Hedison's Leiter seems both like a CIA operative and a decent human being.

I think the worst Leiter was Rik Van Nutter. He just seemed like some random guy picked up off the beach, especially with the loud hawaiian clothing.

[Colossus]

1. Jack Lord (DN)- The most equal in stature to young Connery.
2. Bernie Casey (NSNA)- Like lightning struck to make an unmatched friendship equally returned by Bond.
3. David Hedison (LALD & LTK)- Most all-around Felix. And the only recurring one.
4. Michael Pate (CR 54)- Yeah, Clarence, Sharply played.
5. Jeffrey Wright (CR 06)- Almost 'John Terry' underused, but he was on the mark with what he did.
6. Rik Van Nutter (TB)- Mirror image. A bit bland though.
7. Cec Linder (GF)- More like a friendly uncle.
8. John Terry (TLD)- Gone in a flash, but had a blip of promise.
9. Norman Burton (DAF)- Why so grumpy?!

[bill007]

While Jeffrey Wright is the current hot choice, but being the old geezer I am, I had to go for the original...Jack Lord.

[capungo]

Jack Lord, although David Hedison is a close second. Although I'm interested to see where the go with Jeffrey Wright, IMO there wasn't enough of him in Casino Royale for me to put him as a fav.

Edited by capungo, 28 February 2007 - 04:25 AM.

[Taro Todoroki]

I'd say it's a tie between Jack Lord and David Hedison. Hedison wins the tiebreaker because he was in two movies. The rest are mainly forgetable with a few exceptions, Jeffrey Wright for one.

[ChronoBreak]

The only ones I can really put my full enthusiasm behind are Jack Lord in Dr. No and David Hedison in License to Kill. The others were mostly forgettable.

Jeffrey Wright is a fine actor, and I thought that he was a great Felix in CR - But as others have stated, he was definitely underutilized.

Maybe in Bond 22 they can work in a bit more of a Bond/Felix dynamic.

Edited by ChronoBreak, 28 February 2007 - 06:12 AM.

[Dr.Mirakle32]

I Don't understand why Jefferey Wright's ranking is so high. While he is a good actor, he had very little screentime, acted like a typical Hollwyood "CIA Man," said "brotha" every other line, and dissapeared after the card game. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure Ian Fleming didn't have an actor of Wright's caliber in mind when he wrote the character.

[Righty007]

I Don't understand why Jefferey Wright's ranking is so high. While he is a good actor, he had very little screentime, acted like a typical Hollwyood "CIA Man," said "brotha" every other line, and dissapeared after the card game. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure Ian Fleming didn't have an actor of Wright's caliber in mind when he wrote the character.

We must have seen two different movies because Jeffrey Wright's Leiter never once said "brotha." He did say "brother" twice which has a whole different meaning than what you're trying to imply. He used "brother" in the sense that he and Bond share the same profession and are from allied agencies hence the "brother from Langley" line. Langley, Virginia is where the CIA headquarters is.

[Blonde Bond]

Double-O-Felix aka David Hedison (Live and Let Die and Licence To Kill)
He's the man.

[JLaidlaw]

I don't agree that Felix should be the American that matches Bond. He is always secondary in the books, and makes a few mistakes. I think Jack Lord and David Hedison are the best on-screen Leiters, but that the screenwriters have always used Leiter in the wrong role, a sort of by-the-book man who sympathises with Bond, which results in him telling the mischievous Bond off.
The most like the books is the unofficial (who cares if he's black) Bernie Casey, who actually does feel like a true friend to Bond, as well as being his equal, but not quite his equal.

[glidrose]

Most underrated? Norman Burton (Diamonds Are Forever). He had personality and works well with Connery. Good actor too.

Most overrated? Rik Van Nutter (Thunderball). He belongs in a 60's Bond spoof rip-off or a Beach Blanket Bingo movie. He and Connery have no chemistry.

Most uneven? David Hedison (Live and Let Die and Licence To Kill). Great in LALD, probably the best Leiter. But he was not so good in LTK, and perhaps even terrible. Too hysterical. The thing is Hedison and Moore had great chemistry - they were great friends in real life. Hedison and Dalton had no chemistry. And the age difference doesn't help...

Jack Lord (Dr. No) was good if a bit stiff and wooden.

Cec Linder (Goldfinger) was forgettable but not too bad.

Bernie Casey (Never Say Never Again) was okay but no Jeffrey Wright.

John Terry (The Living Daylights) is too wooden! Right age and accent. But that's it! Again, no chemistry with Dalton.

Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace) is excellent, but his casting still seems like political correctness run amok: "let's cast the black guy".

Let's not forget Michael Pate (Clarence Leiter) in CR'54. I seem to recall he was quite good.

[Hansen]

To my opinion, the right Leiter is still to be found. So far, we never event get close to the cool Texan guy, jazz-lover and who is able to match Bond when it comes to have a couple of drinks.

 

Also, we never had a true sequence with Bond and Leiter where they have to join forces (except LTK PTS). In books (TMWTGG and DAF mostly), Leiter shows great abilities when it comes to kick asses

[tdalton]

With the exception of Jeffrey Wright and, to a far lesser extent Jack Lord and Hedison from LALD, none of the Leiters have been good.  Given how much EON seems to want to turn Bond into a buddy-cop franchise or a Mission: Impossible ripoff with Bond always being accompanied in the field by M and now Q and Moneypenny, I'd almost just say that I'd rather see them leave the Leiter character to the novels.  The films are getting crowded enough, and it's about time that Bond actually went after the villain alone for a change.

[S K Y F A L L]

Norman Burton (Diamonds Are Forever) was alright IMO. I gave my vote to Jeffrey Wright CR and QOS just because I think we'll get at least another Felix performance out of him which is very exciting. David Hedison (Live and Let Die and Licence To Kill) would probably have been my next vote. 

[Guy Haines]

Felix Leiter has always been a character treated with a bit less respect by the film makers than others, at least until recently. For example, we had one actor as "Q" for decades, and on reflection rightly so, in spite of the fact that Major Boothroyd wasn't a regular character in the novels. Yet it didn't seem to matter who played Leiter, even though Ian Fleming had set him up from the outset as a something of a sidekick for Bond, albeit not in every book.

 

I liked the re-introduction of Leiter in the Craig era. Jeffrey Wright was a very good choice, and I'd like to see him return in Bond 24 and/or 25, with a much expanded role. (Wright was very much underused in CR and QoS, another example of the Leiter character being undervalued, even with a first rate actor in the part?)

 

There's been a recurring debate on Cbn about our seeing too much of M in the recent films. It's arguable that, for a while, we've seen too little of Felix Leiter. 

[Turn]

I've always liked Leiter, as I feel Bond should have another reliable, although not quite equal, male agent in the field with him at times. The continuity of the part was somewhat screwy over the years and I guess part of that is, from what I've read, that Jack Lord would have continued the role but wanted more money and Eon wasn't having any of it. They figured the role was minor enough that they could plug in any number of value-priced actors to fill it. I find Cec Linder and Norman Burton more distracting than believable as a friend and capable field operative. They probably are closer to what real FBI or normal agents would be like and that's not what I want in a Bond movie.

 

At the same time, the producers made the right call on how the character of Leiter has been handled as these are James Bond movies; this isn't the Man From UNCLE where they are equal partners or Mission: Impossible or Agents of SHIELD with a team concept. Leiter should be interesting enough we want to see him return and become a solid part of a story, not just a token appearance like Q or Moneypenny used to be.

[jmarks4life]

Jeffrey Wright & David Hedison.

[The Krynoid man]

I watched the Moore and Dalton films the most as a kid, so Hedison.

[hilly]

Jack Lord. Cool, sardonic and believable as a friend of Bond.

 

Jeffrey Wright is good, but I'm still holding out for Jon Hamm as Leiter...