R.I.P. Zena Marshall

[Reza]

From The Times (London)
July 18, 2009


Zena Marshall: actress in Dr No

The actress Zena Marshall was one of the first Bond girls in her role as Miss Taro, the Chinese double agent in Dr No (1962). Her character was a secretary at Government House in Kingston, who is working for the villainous doctor. Bond (Sean Connery) realises she is a traitor, but that does not stop him from seducing her before handing her over to a waiting police officer outside her bungalow.

Ursula Andress is often cited as the first Bond girl. Technically, the distinction was enjoyed by Eunice Gayson, who played Sylvia Trench, whom Bond meets at the casino. But Miss Taro is the first woman that Bond seduces on a mission, before meeting the Ursula Andress character, Honey Rider.

Marshall appeared in dozens of films, television series and plays. She made her screen debut as a handmaiden in Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and retired from films after a starring role in the sci-fi hokum The Terrornauts (1967).

Zena Moyra Marshall was born in Nairobi on New Year’s Day in 1926. Her father died when she was young, and her mother married a landowner in Leicestershire, where she spent her early years. Her mother’s family were French, and Zena’s dark beauty would later lend itself to a series of exotic screen characters.

She attended St Mary’s Roman Catholic school, Ascot, Berkshire, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and worked with Ensa, the Entertainments National Service Association during the Second World War.

A noted beauty, she was courted by Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia and she once dined with President Perón. In 1947 she married the band leader Paul Adam, though the union was brief. Her acting career began in theatre, but by the late 1940s she was also appearing regularly in small roles in such films as Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948) and So Long at the Fair (1950).

By the early 1960s she was also working regularly on television, in such popular series as Danger Man (1961 and 1964) and Sir Francis Drake (1962).

Like many others, she was not overly impressed when approached with the chance to work on the first James Bond film, though it was a significant supporting role, with scenes in the office and the bedroom, requiring her to appear in a silk dressing room and dripping wet in a towel.

Contributing to a DVD commentary many years later, Marshall made it clear that she thought the script was nothing special till director Terence Young introduced an element of humour. She also remembered that it took three days to shoot her landmark bedroom scene with Connery and that she found it very difficult to spit in his face when handed over to the police.

Marshall was caught up in some controversy when her picture, in skimpy dressing gown and towelling robe, appeared in a controversial series of James Bond photo cards issued with bubblegum in 1964 by a company called Somportex. The cards also included other early Bond girls in various states of undress.

One MP claimed they were “a disgusting and disgraceful corruption of young children”. The cards were withdrawn and replaced with a set with more emphasis on guns and violence, which seemed to please everyone. Both sets are now worth hundreds of pounds.

Marshall went on to further TV work and played an Italian countess in the big-budget family movie Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). There was a second brief marriage, and Marshall married for a third time, to the film producer Ivan Foxwell, who predeceased her in 2002. They had no children.

Zena Marshall, actress, was born on January 1, 1926. She died on July 10, 2009, aged 83