ROBERT SHAW AND SEAN CONNERY: AN INSEPERABLE BOND

Sean Connery and Robert Shaw were both a powerful force and presence on screen throughout their careers, so perhaps it is no surprise that the acting legends ignited the screen whenever they appeared on it together.

The most famous and celebrated pairing of Sean Connery and Robert Shaw was undoubtedly in the second James Bond film, From Russia With Love (1963).

Connery was back as 007 in his second outing as the Ian Fleming spy, with Shaw turning up the tension as Russian agent, Donald 'Red' Grant.

And although it was only the second big screen James Bond adventure, you really thought that Grant could take Bond, which really raised the tension, especially in the train fight scene.

It's an iconic Bond moment that still stands the test of time - and is one that is held in such high regard that the Bond series keeps on retuning to it, with fight sequences on trains or in confined spaces.

Of that original fight itself, we said the following in our review of From Russia With Love: From Russia With Love Still Leaves You Shaken And Stirred

It's almost nine minutes from build up to fight's end and the tension and claustrophobia is almost palpable. The scene is just as powerful today and is a pure masterstroke of cinema, with no music and the only sounds being the grunting and punching of two men and the rythmic noise of the Orient Express.

The fight scene itself took two days to film, originally it was going to be largely done with doubles but Connery and Shaw insisted they block it out with the stunt coordinator. And when was it filmed? June 20 and 21, the former being the date that Jaws was released across the US 12 years later.

In the end there was just one shot in the final sequence that wasn't Connery or Shaw and nearly 60 years later it still holds its power with its close quarter filming, exciting editing, claustropbic setting and use off sound. Make no mistake, From Russia With Love is to cinematic fisticuffs what Bullit is to car chases.

The next time that Connery and Shaw woukd meet on screen, Bond would be long behind the Scottish screen legend and Shaw had just come off the back of the world's most successful film, Jaws.

This time Connery was taking on someone else who was a pretty good shot, although it wasn't with a Walther PPK, it was with a bow and arrow as he was playing Robin Hood.

Robin and Marian (1976) was directed by Richard Lester, who had helmed The Three Musketeers and The Four Muskateers earlier that decade, and also starred Audrey Hepburn as Maid Marian.

It was a notable film as (spolier alert) it was the first Robin Hood film to show the famous outlaw dying. It's an interesting film showing an aging hero with flaws who has returned home in the autumn of his life, which arguably makes it all the more interesting that it is an aging Connery post Bond.

But that doesn't mean that the Sherrif of Nottingham (Shaw) isn't any less threatening. Although the film is entitled Robin and Marian, I'd argue that it is actually more about the relationship of these two aging men.

They develop mutual, grudging respect and Shaw is wonderful in his role as the Sheriff, almost sympathetic and honourable here, certainly more human than some of the out and out villainous portrayals, such as by Alan Rickman.

Their struggle ends in a dramatic sword duel, but this is no Errol Flynn duel of swash and buckle - which Shaw could do and did do in that same years Swashbuckler - this is a more tired, exhausting and realistic slow and cumbersome fight by two dinosaurs from the crusades past their best.

It's a film as much about mortality as it is about Robin Hood, perhaps Al the more poignant now that Connery is no longer with us, and that Shaw died just two years after the release of this very film.

But of course, thanks to the magic of cinema, they have never really left us.

However, there was one meeting of Connery and Shaw on screen that preceded both of these, this time that meeting took place on the small screen.

It was in an episode of ITV's Play of the Week, which was screened on Tuesday October 11, 1960, between 9.35pm and 11.05pm.

The episode was entitled The Pets, which is about two RAF pilots, shot down during the war, who are captured by an eccentric German and imprisoned in his cellar - for years, because he doesn't tell them when the war is over.

But what makes this play really interesting is that it was adapted by Robert Shaw himself, from one of his own novels, The Hiding Place.

Sadly, most of the episodes of this anthology series were lost or wiped in the 1970s.

Words by Dean Newman

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