MYSTERY MONDAY MOMENT — Minus Mom

OK, we admit it.

We cropped out the wife and mother in the above photo.  She was simply TOO recognizable.

Today’s challenge is to identify dad and the children. Can you?

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here with another goofy Monday exercise built around a period candid photo unearthed from our vast picture file.  Excuse the creative license with the above shot, but to include that other party would have made things way, way too easy.

Before we provide some clues as to who’s who above, let’s cover the two chaps pictured in last Monday’s shot — Author Meets Creation. Yup, the guy to the right is Sean Connery.  That was the easy part.

The distinguished looking fellow to the left may not have been immediately recognizeable. But the fact that he is shown chatting with Connery on a movie set was a HUGE clue.

He is novelist Ian Lancaster Fleming, the author of 14 novels beginning in 1953 featuring 007, aka James Bond of the British Secret Service.  The books, of course, inspired the continuing movie franchise, one of the longest lasting and most successful screen series ever covering nearly two dozen titles and employing seven actors in the principal role.

Of course, no one made the part more his own than Connery.  It may surprise you to find out that the  Fleming himself initially wasn’t thrilled with the casting of the actor as Bond. The aristocratic author was put off by Connery’s poor Scottish family backround.  David Niven or even Cary Grant were far more suitable as 007, thought Fleming.

He was wrong, and Connery never forgot the slight.  Years later he told interviewers that  a little of Fleming’s conversation went a long way.

Now, back to today’s mystery photo subjects.  The generous blokes that we are, we provide the following clues:

– The grinning fellow to the right was named Michael at birth in 1915.

–He married four times. His first wife was actress Lynn Bari. He was her second husband.

– The missing mom here was our man’s wife No. 2.  The union lasted 13 years and produced the two children seen here.

– The girl to the left became a pretty well-known show biz personality, although not as famous as her half sister.

So there!  Who are these people, and why are we looking at them?  As the French say, bonne chance.