AS the world mourns the death of the one and only Sir Sean Connery, it’s worth remembering that part of the film that propelled him to global stardom was filmed right here in Southend.

Dr No was Connery’s first Bond film but many believe it was his third outing at 007 - Goldfinger - that cemented his claim to the best Bond ever.

Southend pops up briefly in Goldfinger, still rated by many fans as the quintessential Bond film. It was also the last of the films to involve Bond’s creator, author Ian Fleming.

Some of the scenes for the 1964 blockbuster were filmed at the original terminal building at Southend Airport. In one scene viewers spy the master villain Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce loaded onto a British United Air Ferries Carvair, just ahead of his flight to Geneva.

Having tracked Goldfinger down, Bond drives into the airport in his Aston Martin DB5. The car is loaded into the plane and continues his pursuit of Goldfinger on his way to Switzerland.

The actor, who died at his home in the Bahamas on Saturday aged 90, the car, and the movie crew, spent a day filming at Southend Airport in early ‘64 - back in the days when a film took months rather than years to make.

The day’s shooting accounts for about one minute’s running time in the film. It was conducted under tight security and secrecy. The local press were not notified, although as rumours spread around town, a photographer for the Southend Standard (the Echo’s predecessor) turned up at the airport.

He managed to catch a distant shot of the car, with a tall hatted figure inside it but that’s about all.

In the film, Bond’s legendary Aston Martin was presented to him by Secret Service’s chief technician Q, making the first of what were to become regular appearances.

Q had fitted the vehicle with oil blowers to see off pursuers, along with armaments and an ejector seat.

Nowadays, these effects would be achieved via computer graphics, but in those days the technology was far less sophisticated.

The 1950s and 60s were the glory days for Southend Airports and a time when people, just like the secret agent himself, could fly in their cars from Southend to Le Touquet or Calais in France.

Although the press weren’t invited to the Goldfinger shoot at Southend they were allowed to cover the car’s return from Switzerland, minus the tall, dark and handsome presence of 007.

Some of the lucky Southend ground-crew got to inspect it at close quarters and even got to sit inside.

One of them was Michael Buckmaster who was a load-master at Southend Airport in the 1960s. In 2008, to mark what would have been Ian Flemming’s 100th birthday Michael recounted his memories of the day the Aston Martin flew back to Southend to the Echo:

“I used to drive most of the cars from the planes, but there were one or two really valuable ones, like the Bond car, and the odd Rolls Royce, that weren’t allowed to be driven,” he said. “The machine guns you see in the film weren’t real guns, just hydraulic rods. But they did go in and out. They were operated off the car’s engine.”