GRINDELWALD

Contributed by: The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia by Steven Jay Rubin

Swiss village, located near the village of Mürren and the mountaintop restaurant Piz Gloria, which served as the location for the skating rink sequence in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In that sequence, Bond (George Lazenby) attempts to escape from SPECTRE ski troops and is rescued by Tracy (Diana Rigg), the woman he will marry.

Recalled director Peter Hunt, “The skating rink was melting as we shot on it. Some nights we had to wait and see if the temperature would drop below zero. We would wait until midnight or one o’clock in the morning and then ask, ‘Is it freezing yet?’ and we would be informed, ‘No way.’ So, in the end, I just had to mark off certain areas and make sure the skaters didn’t wander.”[1]

Adding visual interest to the skating sequences were Rudi and Gerda Johner, a skating duo who were given the center spotlight on the festive evening. Since Diana Rigg couldn’t skate with any degree of proficiency, the key sequence in the film in which Tracy skates up to the bedraggled Bond was done with Rigg’s skating double. Hunt kept his camera focused on the double’s legs as she skates up to Bond, and then he cut to Rigg.


[1] Peter Hunt, interview by Steven Jay Rubin, London, June 21, 1977.

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