Director of Vegas-made Bond film ‘Diamonds are Forever’ dies at 93

Director Guy Hamilton, whose four James Bond movies include 1971’s made-in-Vegas “Diamonds Are Forever,” has died at 93, the BBC reported Thursday.

Hamilton directed movies starring the first two actors to play 007 on the big screen: Sean Connery in 1964’s “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds,” then Roger Moore in 1973’s “Live and Let Die” and 1974’s “The Man With the Golden Gun.”

In “Diamonds Are Forever,” which marked Connery’s farewell to Bond (until 1983’s “Never Say Never Again”), Hamilton ran the British secret agent from downtown to the Strip.

Locations ranged from the Riviera and Circus Circus to what was then the International (now the Westgate), recast as the Whyte House, Vegas lair of tycoon Willard Whyte (played by singer — and future frozen breakfast mogul — Jimmy Dean).

Other “Diamonds” locations ranged from the Riviera and Circus Circus to Boulder Highway’s Palm Mortuary — or, as it was identified in the movie, the Slumber Mortuary, where Bond finds himself trapped in a coffin headed to the crematory furnace.

“Incredibly, incredibly saddened to hear the wonderful director Guy Hamilton has gone to the great cutting room in the sky,” Moore wrote on Twitter.

Hamilton also worked with Michael Caine in the Harry Palmer spy thriller “Funeral in Berlin”.

He also directed two Agatha Christie adaptations: “The Mirror Crack’d” with Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple and “Evil Under the Sun” with Peter Ustinov as Poirot.

He went to school in England but his family lived in France and he started his career in French cinema in the 1930s.

He was assistant to British director Carol Reed (whose credits range from the classic 1949 thriller “The Third Man” to 1968’s Oscar-winner “Oliver!”), but moved to become a director after World War II.