PEPPER, SHERIFF J. W.

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

Bumbling Louisiana lawman portrayed by American character actor Clifton James in both Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. A caricature of the tough-talking southern peace officer, Pepper was introduced in Live and Let Die as an outraged policeman who can’t seem to halt a hair-raising motorboat chase between Bond (Roger Moore) and the water-borne henchmen of Kananga (Yaphet Kotto).

Having stopped Adam (Tommy Lane) for speeding, Pepper is about to make his first arrest when motorboats start flying over the highway. One of them crashes into his police car. Adam escapes, and Sheriff Pepper joins the chase, eventually catching up to 007, who introduces himself to local authorities as a “secret agent.” Pepper is incredulous. “Secret agent?” he screams. “On whose side?”

Pepper was a popular element of the movie, so the producers brought him back in the next 007 film, The Man with the Golden Gun. This time, Pepper, vacationing in Thailand with his wife, thinks he sees Bond motoring down a causeway. Nah, he decides.

In the film’s most outrageous sequence, Pepper is admiring a new red AMC Hornet in a Bangkok showroom when Bond suddenly jumps into the car and drives it through a plate glass window. Bond does a double take when he sees Pepper, but he’s in too much of a hurry chasing Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) to think about it. Aware of Bond’s true identity, Pepper gets into the spirit of the chase to the point that he even flashes his Louisiana State Police ID to an approaching troop of angry Thai police officers, who promptly handcuff him.

And Pepper is in the passenger seat when Bond and his Hornet perform the famous 360-degree spiral jump over the collapsed Thai river bridge.

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