Did You Know That Pre-Bond, Roger Moore Flourished as a Knitwear Model?

In the early 1950s, before to become the James Bond we all loved, Roger Moore used to model knitting patterns for several knitwear companies in Yorkshire. Of course looking at a beautiful knit is always pleasant, but when it is modeled by young Roger Moore, it’s simply ravishing!

Sir Roger George Moore KBE (October 14, 1927 – May 23, 2017) was an English actor. He was the third actor to portray fictional secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions/MGM Studios film series. His seven appearances as Bond are the most of any actor in the Eon-produced entries.

Moore was apprenticed to an animation studio, but he was fired after he made a mistake with some animation cels. When his father investigated a robbery at the home of film director Brian Desmond Hurst, Moore was introduced to the director and hired as an extra for the 1945 film Caesar and Cleopatra. While there, Moore attracted an off-camera female fan following, and Hurst decided to pay Moore’s fees at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Moore spent three terms at RADA, where he was a classmate of his future Bond co-star Lois Maxwell, the original Miss Moneypenny. During his time there, he developed the Mid-Atlantic accent and relaxed demeanor that became his screen persona.

Moore made his professional debut in Alexander Korda’s Perfect Strangers (1945) alongside actors Robert Donat, Deborah Kerr, and Glynis Johns. In his book Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown, Moore states that his first television appearance was on March 17, 1949 in The Governess by Patrick Hamilton, a live broadcast (as usual in that era), in which he played the minor part of Bob Drew. He had uncredited parts in films including Paper Orchid and The Interrupted Journey (both 1949). He was in Drawing-Room Detective on TV and appeared in the films One Wild Oat and Honeymoon Deferred (both 1951).

In the early 1950s Moore worked as a model, appearing in print advertisements in the UK for knitwear (earning him the nickname “The Big Knit”) and a wide range of other products such as toothpaste. Here, below is a collection of 18 amazing vintage photos of a very young Roger Moore as a knitwear model from the early 1950s: