This is the throwing knife that was used as a prop during the filming of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a James Bond film starring George Lazenby that premiered in 1969.
The knife can be seen in the film, and in the theatrical trailer below, being thrown by Bond at Marc-Ange Draco, played by Gabriele Ferzetti, at a calendar just behind him in a bookshelf as an act of intimidation.
Above Video: This is the original theatrical trailer for “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” it includes the above mentioned knife throwing scene briefly, and you can see it from the 2:02 mark onwards.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was perhaps one of the more controversial Bond films of the era. It would be the first made after the retirement of Sean Connery from the role, with Australian actor George Lazenby hired to replace him.
Lazenby had little prior acting experience at the time, having only appeared in a few commercials. He had been a model before this time, and his first feature film appearance would be playing Bond, a Hollywood trial by fire if ever there was one.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name, first published in 1962. It was decided that this film would remain faithful to the original storyline, and it’s still considered by many to be one of the films in the Bond series that most closely follows the original Fleming novel that it’s based on.
The critical reception of the film was mixed, but it would go on to become one of the top-performing films of the year at the box office. Connery would then return as Bond one last time for Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.
Lazenby refused to play the role again, and went on to enjoy a long career starring in 31 films at the time of writing, and appearing in a remarkable number of TV series including Matlock Police, Hawaii Five-O, General Hospital, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Baywatch, Team Knight Rider, and Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E..
Interestingly, Lazenby would almost appear in a film alongside Bruce Lee. He travelled to Hong Kong to meet Bruce Lee and producer Raymond Chow. They offered him a role in their upcoming film Game of Death, but Lee would die shortly afterwards. Lazenby had been scheduled to meet Lee on the day he died to finalize his contract.
James Bond’s Throwing Knife
As noted further up, this knife was used by George Lazenby, as James Bond, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would go on to become one of the top-performing films of the year at the box office, remarkably it was George Lazenby’s first ever film, and he played Bond in the lead role.
The knife has a fixed stainless steel blade and a dark wooden handle with brass rivets, a finger guard and a curved stainless steel butt. The handle is engraved WHITBY/ Solingen Germany, and the leather sheath that comes with the knife is stamped Solingen/Western Germany.
It measures in at 10 x 1.5 x 0.75 inches and the sheath is 10 x 1.75. This knife is now due to cross the auction block with Julien’s on the 12th of June with a price guide of $10,000 – $20,000 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Julien’s
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
