Character actor Bruce Glover, who portrayed the gay assassin Mr. Wint alongside jazz musician Putter Smith’s Mr. Kidd in Sean Connery’s final official James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever,” has died. He was 92.
Glover’s son, “Back to the Future” and “Willard” actor Crispin Glover, revealed the news on Instagram. A cause of death wasn’t immediately available.
A Chicago native, Glover was known for some eccentric performances including as Deputy Grady Coker in 1973’s “Walking Tall” and its sequels, as a redneck thug in Stanley Kramer’s “Bless the Beasts and Children,” an associate of Jack Nicholson’s character in Polanski’s “Chinatown,” a debt collector in Walter Hill’s “Hard Times,” and the wheelchaired Feldman in Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World”.
Other films included the original “The Thomas Crown Affair ,” “Night of the Scarecrow,” “Warlock: The Armageddon ,” “Who Killed Teddy Bear?,” “Black Gunn,” “CC and Company” and “The Big Score”.
He also routinely showed up on TV shows of the 1960s and 1980s including “Perry Mason,” “My Favorite Martian,” “CHiPs,” Mod Squad,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Hart to Hart,” “T.J. Hooker” and more.
On the Bond film, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd knock off several targets but three attempts on the life of Connery’s Bond end with the pair being killed.
Glover’s Mr. Wint has one of the most ludicrous deaths of the entire franchise when Connery straps a bomb between his legs, restrains him in a way that leads to the character uttering a “woooo” in pleasure, and then gets thrown off a cruise ship – executing an Olympic diver style flip before exploding just above the water line.
Glover famously never went to acting school or took an acting class, but successfully taught acting throughout his career. He also performed in hundreds of plays, appearing on Broadway with Bette Davis in “The Night of the Iguana”.
His wife of 56 years, Betty, was a ballet dancer who performed in “Oklahoma!” on Broadway. She died in 2016.
Source: THR