Bruce Glover (1932-2025)
31st March 2025
The eccentric actor known for his role as Mr. Wint has died aged 92
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 - The eccentric actor known for his role as Mr. Wint has died aged 92)
American character actor Bruce Glover, known for portraying the assassin Mr. Wint in 'Diamonds Are Forever', died March 12 at the age of 92 in Los Angeles. He once said, “The final moment in the film where Sean Connery does that rude thing pushing the hooha up my yaha and giving that character his final great sexual moment, is the biggest laugh in the movie.”
Born on 2 May 1932 in Chicago, Bruce Herbert Glover boasted he had the instincts for a career in showbiz from the age of three. Appearing in a church nativity, he recalled, “I had a big, barrelled chest for a kid. I had one line…‘No room at the inn!’ The whole church burst into laughter. I thought this was great, so I did it again, again,n and again. And they laughed more and more, and finally the minister is chasing me around the altar and he picks me up and carries me down the aisle and I’m still yelling out the line.”
Growing up in a working-class family, Glover began delivering groceries at the age of six to help support his family. Later, he worked on a Chicago Loop newsstand and by fourteen he was ladling glass in a factory. “In those days in Chicag,o you had to be a tough guy otherwise you were a nerd. Luckily, I was a nerd with lots of muscles. I was able to protect my nerd friends from the macho guys. I am not that big, but I can knock someone out with one punch.” At school, Glover excelled at football and considered a career as a professional.
In the early 1950s, Glover posed part-time as a life model at the local arts institute, “There was a beautiful girl across the room who came up to me in the break and said, ‘Bruce how would you like to be a gorilla?’ I thought, ‘Is this a new sex thing?’ It turned out she was a stripper and wanted a guy strong enough to wear a 98-pound ape suit and toss her around while she stripped for 15 minutes in a speciality act.” Glover signed up and performed the act as part of a night club variety show in Florida, “A magician tapped me with his wand, and said, ‘Bruce, you are an actor! You make that gorilla so believable you ought to try acting.’”
In 1953, he was drafted into the US army for two years and served six months in Korea. While still hoping for a career in sports, he secured the lead in a college performance of Tennessee Williams ‘Camino Real’. Glover admitted he had never even seen a play or read a book. He then did a summer stock season in Wisconsin, “I lived out of my car, slept on the porch of the theatre – they didn’t pay anything, and I was starving but I got to play the lead every week. I decided this is it – I am going to be actor.” He trained at Northwestern University, earning a degree in Speech, “I continued to do my ape act to get me through that school.” Glover found success on Broadway and acted in over 100 plays appearing opposite Bette Davis in Williams’ ‘The Night of the Iguana’ in 1961 and Anne Bancroft in ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ in 1963.
Glover moved to California in 1965 because he felt that was where real actors made real money. He secured parts in film and television on such shows as ‘Car 54, Where are You’, ‘Route 66’, ‘Perry Mason’, ‘My Favourite Martian’, ‘The Rat Patrol’, ‘Mod Squad’ and ‘Mission Impossible’.
Following his performance as a French mortician in ‘Paris 7000’ Glover caught the attention of casting director Billy Gordon who secured him a role as a redneck thug in ‘Bless the Beasts & Children’ (1971). Impressed, Gordon then put Glover forward to play one of the two assassins, Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint in ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, characters loosely based on the sadistic killers who had originally appeared in Ian Fleming’s 1956 novel.
Initially, Glover was told he looked too normal, and the filmmakers were instead searching for a modern version of the unlikely but popular duo of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Glover told Bond historian Steven Jay Rubin in 1977, “When they went for the rather wild look of Putter Smith [as Mr. Kidd] they suddenly decided they had enough of that kind of look and felt I was fine.” Glover had two meetings with director Guy Hamilton, Albert R. Broccoli, and Harry Saltzman at Universal where ‘Diamonds’ was in pre-production. He claimed he never read for the part. While Glover was an actor, Smith was cast by chance. A jazz bassist, who performed alongside legends such as Thelonious Monk, Smith’s unique look appealed to Hamilton when he spotted him performing in a jazz bar in Los Angeles.
Glover requested that Hamilton not reveal which of the two killers he was to play. In 2015, when interviewed by Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury for their book ‘Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond films,’ he said, “I didn’t want to know if I was Wint or Kidd because I didn’t want to be thinking about lines. I look at life coming into a character. If you look at my work, there is no Bruce Glover character. I am never the same person.” Glover only discovered he was Mr. Wint, when the props master asked him to pick out his scorpion for his first scene shot on location in the Nevada desert.
Glover revealed his approach to the character further to Field and Chowdhury, “Putter Smith was such a gift to me as an actor. He was real. He didn’t act. He’s like a giant toy. He’s my toy. I put a key in the side, push the button, and he is mine. That was the relationship. It was possession. Look at the scene where Putter admires Jill St. John [on the plane]. I had no lines, I just looked at him ready to tear his head off, because you’re mine! How dare you look at that woman! That’s a terrific piece of acting.”
Glover’s first meeting with Sean Connery was on set shooting the scene in which Wint and Kidd throw James Bond in the boot of a car before dumping him in the desert, “I thought I would make a joke and make Sean laugh because I have always been great with jokes. I like having fun. So, I said in a wispy voice, ‘I think I’m getting emotionally involved.’ I thought he would laugh. He didn’t. I thought, ‘Oh my God, he actually thinks I am making a pass at him.’ I was about to tell him it was a joke then I thought, ‘To hell with it, make him worry.’ (Laughs). I never crossed paths with Sean Connery again. But a couple of years after ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ had been released, I was working with a stuntman who was about to go off and work on a picture with Sean. I said, ‘Give Sean this message - Bruce Glover sends you his loooooove.’ (Laughs). When I saw him a few months later he delivered Sean’s reply, ‘Tell that crazy son of a bitch hello from me!’ I still laugh about it to this day.”
Glover was disappointed not to be asked to join the publicity activity for ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and only saw the film for the first time at a public screening in Los Angeles. However, he was impressed by his own performance, “I didn’t realise I could create such a creepy weird character! I knew it was good, and I could see my ideas had worked. Those are the best Bond villains ever written. A lot of it I take credit for because a lot of the funny ideas were mine.” He kept his ‘Diamonds’ wardrobe but later gave one of the suits to a homeless man who knocked on his door.
He appeared opposite Jack Nicholson in Roman Polanski’s neo-noir mystery ‘Chinatown’ (1974). “Roman and I got on very well, and we used to play chess between takes. He said, ‘GLOVER. What I want from you is YOU! The way you were in that office when we met. So just be YOU.” Other credits include Walter Hill’s ‘Hard Times’ (1975) with James Coburn and the ‘Walking Tall’ series (1973-1977), the first of which starred future Bond alumni Joe Don Baker. Glover enjoyed a steady career in television with appearances in ‘Kojak’, ‘Hart to Hart’, ‘The Dukes of Hazard’, and ‘The A-Team’ among others.
Glover was an energetic and enthusiastic eccentric. The front of his home in the suburb of Mar Vista, Los Angeles was shrouded in overgrown shrubbery, the interior filed with his paintings and art projects all at various stages of completion, while a Christmas tree twinkled in the living room at the height of summer. “I don’t understand this term retirement. What are you going to do? I need to be working on stuff. Writing, painting. I played soccer until I was 70.” He joked, “I don’t look my age, so please don’t look at it on IMDb. It’s a lie. I am 25 years younger than my listed age! Really, I am.”
He was married twice, first to Connie Overstake from 1949 to 1950. His second marriage was to dancer Marion Elizabeth Lillian "Betty" Krachey, from 1960 until her death in 2016. Their son Crispin was born in 1964 and later became an actor himself, most famously playing George McFly in first instalment of ‘The Back to the Future’ trilogy. In 2007, he was directed by Crispin in the film ‘It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine’ and they acted together in ‘Influence’ (2015).
Bruce Glover died of natural causes and his death was announced by Crispin on Instagram.
Special thanks to Ajay Chowdhury
