William Victor Hooker

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-151931
• Occupation: 1927, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; teacher
• Residence: 1928, Toronto, York Co., Ontario, Canada

William — Ruth Adelaide Wells. Ruth was born 1899, , Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Famous: actress
• Name: Lois Maxwell
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-84800

Notes:

Bond's Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell, dies

(AP) - Lois Maxwell, who starred as Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond movies, has died, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Sunday. She was 80. The Canadian-born actress starred alongside Sean Connery in the first James Bond movie, "Dr. No," in 1962 as the secretary to M, the head of the secret service.

She died Saturday night at Fremantle Hospital near her home in Perth, Australia, the BBC cited a hospital official as saying.
Bond star Roger Moore said she was suffering from cancer.

"It's rather a shock," Moore, who had known her since they were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1944, told BBC radio.
"She was always fun and she was wonderful to be with," he said.

Born Lois Hooker in Ontario, Canada, in 1927, she began her acting on radio before moving to Britain with the Entertainment Corps of the Canadian army at the age of 15, the BBC said. In the late 1940s, she moved to Hollywood and won a Golden Globe for her part in the Shirley Temple comedy "That Hagen Girl." After working in Italy, she returned to Britain in the mid-1950s.

In addition to her 14 appearances as Miss Moneypenny, she also acted in Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" and worked on TV shows including "The Saint," "The Baron, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)," and "The Persuaders!," the BBC said. She was 58 when she appeared in her final Bond film, 1985's "A View To A Kill." She was replaced by 26-year-old Caroline Bliss for "The Living Daylights." Her last film was a 2001 thriller called "The Fourth Angel," alongside Jeremy Irons.


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'Miss Moneypenny' had local ties

October 01, 2007 Canadian Press, with files from The Record Newspaper

Lois Maxwell, who starred as Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond movies, has died, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported yesterday. She was 80.

Born in Kitchener, the actress starred alongside Sean Connery in the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, in 1962 as the secretary to M, the head of the secret service.

She died Saturday night at Fremantle Hospital near her home in Perth, Australia, the BBC cited a hospital official as saying. Bond star Roger Moore said she was suffering from cancer.

"It's rather a shock,'' Moore, who had known her since they were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1944, told BBC radio.
"She was always fun and she was wonderful to be with,'' he said.

Born Lois Hooker in 1927, her connection with Kitchener was, like her appearances in Bond movies, a fleeting encounter, a brief exchange and gone, wrote former Record reporter Tony Reinhart in a March 8, 2003, story in The Record.

"I was born in St. Mary's Catholic Hospital because in the Protestant hospital, the ceiling in the maternity ward had fallen in," Maxwell told Reinhart.

Her mother was gravely ill with phlebitis and Maxwell's father, William Hooker, a teacher at Suddaby School on Frederick Street, summoned her mother's brother, who was a doctor named Archibald Wells, from Toronto. He took Maxwell, only five or six days old at that point, back to Toronto where she lived with his family until she was almost a year old and her mother had recovered. Her father, meanwhile, found work in Toronto.

"So, I certainly don't know Kitchener at all," she said, laughing.

She began her acting on CBC Radio at age 13. A few years later at the height of the Second World War, she was working as "a sort of gag girl" for Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster, and joined the Canadian Army Show with them, even though she was a couple years shy of the minimum age of 18.

When the jig was up, the army released her in England and she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
In the late 1940s, she did a screen test that Jack Warner saw, which led to a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. in Hollywood. She changed her last name to Maxwell (Hooker just wouldn't do for a young actress).

Her debut film performance in 1946 in A Matter of Life and Death, starring David Niven, netted her a Golden Globe Award for most promising newcomer. She went on to appear in more that 50 movies and television shows and had 25 films under her belt by the time she was cast as Miss Moneypenny for the first Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962. She quickly established the character as the lovelorn secret-service secretary who admired Bond (played by Sean Connery), but never bedded him. Sample dialogue:

Bond: "Moneypenny? What gives?"

Moneypenny: "Me -- given an ounce of encouragement."

To film fans it was her best-known role, but Maxwell took on the role because her husband of four years had had a massive heart attack and they had two young children to support. She called every producer she knew and the Bond people were the first to call back.
It didn't make her rich -- there were no residuals and she wore her own clothes in the first five films -- but Maxwell continued in the role through 1985's A View to Kill, also Roger Moore's final turn as Bond. She was replaced by 26-year-old Caroline Bliss for The Living Daylights.

She went on to make about 25 more films and a TV series, including CBC's Adventures in Rainbow Country in 1970-71, after moving back to Canada. She played a widow with two teenage children, a role she would come to know all too well in 1973 when her husband died. She wrote a lifestyle column in the Toronto Sun from 1979 to 1994, and had since lived in England, and most recently in Australia near her son Christian and his young family.

Her last film was a 2001 thriller called The Fourth Angel, alongside Jeremy Irons. Though Moneypenny left her somewhat typecast, she didn't complain. "I've never really regretted it because the people were wonderful to me," she said.