We’ve come to the end of our Surprising Olympians theme week. Our final surprise Olympian is Harold Sakata, best known for playing Oddjob in the James Bond movie Goldfinger in 1964. Before he was a Bond villain, he won a silver medal for the U.S. at the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in weightlifting!
Sakata was born in Hawaii and started weightlifting at 18 because he wanted to bulk up his 113 lb 5’8 frame. After around a year of serious training, he gained 20 pounds and started entering local lifting contests. He qualified for the U.S. 1948 Olympic team, lifting a total of 380 kg in the light-heavyweight division and winning the silver medal.
He retired from weight lifting in 1949 and started training in professional wrestling. Sakata became pretty popular under the ring name Tosh Togo, wrestling primarily in a tag team. Bond producers took notice of Sakata because of his build – he was 5’10 and 284 pounds – which, when combined with his intimidating gaze, made him the perfect choice for Oddjob. In another story, director Guy Hamilton said he saw Sakata wresting on TV and immediately knew he was the right person to play Oddjob.
Sakata had never acted before, but that didn’t matter since Oddjob was mostly mute and required little theatrical skill. His sharpened steel-brimmed bowler hat became a famous and much parodied trademark of the Bond series. It was made by British hat makers Lock & Co. and was adapted by using a chakram (a throwing weapon) in the brim. After Goldfinger, it was the possession of the James Bond Fan Club. It was most recently auctioned in 2006, fetching a price of $36,000.
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