Bruce Glover, who played an infamous ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ villain, dies at 92

Bruce Glover, the character actor who played the James Bond villain Mr Wint in Diamonds Are Forever, has died aged 92.

His son, Back to the Future actor Crispin Glover, shared on Instagram that he died March 12, with no other details surrounding his death given. The actor also shared a host of images taken from his father’s various roles over the years with fans, many of whom called the late Glover a “legend” in the comments.

Among Glover’s film appearances were as Deputy Grady Coker in 1973’s Walking Tall, Duffy in 1974’s Chinatown alongside Jack Nicolson, and as a debt collector in Walter Hill’s 1975 flick Hard Times.

Glover also performed in hundreds of plays, appearing on Broadway opposite Bette Davis in Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana and alongside Anne Bancroft in Mother Courage and Her Children in the early sixties.

In Guy Hamilton’s Diamonds Are Forever (1971) – the sixth and final Eon Productions film to star Sean Connery as James Bond – Glover and Putter Smith portrayed Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, gay assassins who do the bidding of diamond smuggler Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray).

The memorable role saw them complete each other’s sentences, kill a dentist with a scorpion, blow up a helicopter with a time bomb and try, several times, to kill Connery’s  Bond.

Speaking about the role in a 2019 interview (via Variety), Glover said: “Guy Hamilton was wide open to every idea I had and a lot of the success of the humour of that film was me. Those were all my ideas.

“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. I remember getting a few compliments on that from the Saint, Sir Roger Moore, saying it was the funniest Bond moment of all which I appreciate.”

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A post shared by Crispin Hellion Glover (@crispinhellionglover)

Glover was never a trained actor, but seemed to have a natural instinct for it. Earlier on in his life, he had considered becoming an artist or an athlete. After a brief spell with a variety show act, he got drafted into the US. Army and stationed in Korea, serving from 1953 to 55.

Once home, Glover got the part of Kilroy in a local production of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real – despite having said he’d never seen a play before – and went on to earn a degree in speech from Northwestern.

Hundreds of roles followed, and Glover also made numerous appearances on TV shows throughout his career, including Car 54, Where Are You?, Route 66, Perry Mason, My Favorite Martian, The Rat Patrol, Mod Squad and Gunsmoke.
Glover’s wife of 56 years, Betty, died in 2016.

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