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'Moonraker's Dolly'—Braces Or Not?

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
Joined
Apr 18, 2015
Messages
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Calling all Bond fans!

I'm afraid this is one of those so called `Mandela Effect` thingies. Yeah,I know - we had a thread on that before, and I was all rather dismissive of it (for the usual reasons: memories can be unreliable, there are many comon misconceptions - etc). I take none of that back, but...this particular one has got me beat.

So in the film Moonraker (1979) there is a scene in which the baddie Jaws falls for an attractive woman called Dolly (the lovely Blanche Ravalec). Many - including hardcore Bond fans- remember the scene as thus: Jaws smiles at her, and Dolly smiles back - to reveal that she is wearing braces - and so they have something in common and it's love at first sight. It's a sort of visual joke, right?

Except that it's not there anymore - you try finding a picture of dolly with Braces, and watch the film again if you have it - the braces have gone...! (And in the process the whole meaning and comedy of the sequence is lost).

I'm no fan of that era of Bond - way too camp for me - and i'm not even sure if I've seen the film all the way through so i'm not the best judge. However, a great many people remember the scene described above - and they're not all `Mandela Effect` nuts either. see how confused bond fans themselves are about it:
www.M16Community.com

Even the BBC seem to be under the impression that she had braces: www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29160096

The only mundane explanation for this that I can think of is that the film has been, in recent times, tanpered with digitally.Perhaps the fact that she wore braces made her look underage, and in our paedophilia obsessed culture, some wallah deamed this unnacceptable. If this is so, then I think the producers responsible owe the fans, who really care about this kind of stuff, an apology for not having owned up to it and explained why they did it.

And this post would belong in the Political Correctness Gone Mad thread.

Somebody must know...!
 
You know, I watched that film the other day and my thought about that scene was 'something's missing'. Then I thought 'they've cut out the bit where she smiles'.
So yes, I remember her wearing braces too!
Looking at all the pictures of her online, she doesn't have braces...:huh:
 
I watched Moonraker a couple of months ago and didn't notice any braces, but I wasn't looking for them. I thought it was her glasses that marked her out as "different" enough for Jaws' girlfriend and why they would both ultimately be rejected by Drax in his brave new world. Though I suppose a teeth connection would make a kind of sense.
 
FWIW, I remember her with braces too!)
That's fully my recollection, too. More than 99% certain.

@Zeke Newbold , these Mandela Effect scenarios are most-intriging, thanks for posting this here. I'm really unsure as to whether this is consistently a parallel realities thing.
 
Calling all Bond fans!

I'm afraid this is one of those so called `Mandela Effect` thingies. Yeah,I know - we had a thread on that before, and I was all rather dismissive of it (for the usual reasons: memories can be unreliable, there are many comon misconceptions - etc). I take none of that back, but...this particular one has got me beat.

So in the film Moonraker (1979) there is a scene in which the baddie Jaws falls for an attractive woman called Dolly (the lovely Blanche Ravalec). Many - including hardcore Bond fans- remember the scene as thus: Jaws smiles at her, and Dolly smiles back - to reveal that she is wearing braces - and so they have something in common and it's love at first sight. It's a sort of visual joke, right?

Except that it's not there anymore - you try finding a picture of dolly with Braces, and watch the film again if you have it - the braces have gone...! (And in the process the whole meaning and comedy of the sequence is lost).

I'm no fan of that era of Bond - way too camp for me - and i'm not even sure if I've seen the film all the way through so i'm not the best judge. However, a great many people remember the scene described above - and they're not all `Mandela Effect` nuts either. see how confused bond fans themselves are about it:
www.M16Community.com

Even the BBC seem to be under the impression that she had braces: www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29160096

The only mundane explanation for this that I can think of is that the film has been, in recent times, tanpered with digitally.Perhaps the fact that she wore braces made her look underage, and in our paedophilia obsessed culture, some wallah deamed this unnacceptable. If this is so, then I think the producers responsible owe the fans, who really care about this kind of stuff, an apology for not having owned up to it and explained why they did it.

And this post would belong in the Political Correctness Gone Mad thread.

Somebody must know...!

I think the best bet would be to dig out an old VHS copy, I think I might have one and if not I'll be scouring local charity shops and car boot sales from now on because I thought she had braces as well ..
 
I think the best bet would be to dig out an old VHS copy, I think I might have one
You'd think so, yes? But some more-extreme supporters of this concept believe that eg 100+ yr old bibles can become collectively rewritten, under ME circumstances.
 
Wasn't there a comedy where two people with braces kissed, and got tangled up? Maybe people are getting confused with that.

A quick google of this scene reveals... nothing. Did that not exist either?
 
Wasn't there a comedy where two people with braces kissed, and got tangled up? Maybe people are getting confused with that.

A quick google of this scene reveals... nothing. Did that not exist either?

That's kind of a trope. I've heard it as an urban legend and, IIRC, some youngster comedy shows have played it up in the past. I'm thinking along the lines of Saved by the Bell and such.

Can't find a specific example at the moment, but I know I've seen it played up as a comedy thing (could have been in an animated series)....
 
That's kind of a trope. I've heard it as an urban legend and, IIRC, some youngster comedy shows have played it up in the past. I'm thinking along the lines of Saved by the Bell and such.

Can't find a specific example at the moment, but I know I've seen it played up as a comedy thing (could have been in an animated series)....

I've never seen it on tv or a film, but as youngsters with braces, it was definitely something we believed. Everyone had a friend-of-a-friend who'd got tangled up while kissing and had to make an embarrassing trip to the emergency room. No, I can't verify a single case. ;)

We had a further variation - only people who had the same type of braces could get tangled, so it was safe for a person with "railroad tracks" to kiss someone with "doorknobs". We took this very seriously back in junior high. :p

As for the Moonraker story, I can't comment as that film is only a hazy memory to me.
Hopefully someone can produce an old VHS tape.
 
I've never seen it on tv or a film, but as youngsters with braces, it was definitely something we believed. Everyone had a friend-of-a-friend who'd got tangled up while kissing and had to make an embarrassing trip to the emergency room. No, I can't verify a single case. ;)

We had a further variation - only people who had the same type of braces could get tangled, so it was safe for a person with "railroad tracks" to kiss someone with "doorknobs". We took this very seriously back in junior high. :p

As for the Moonraker story, I can't comment as that film is only a hazy memory to me.
Hopefully someone can produce an old VHS tape.
Re: kissing with braces ..

I remember reading somewhere about a young couple in (I think from hazy memory) Japan who leaned through different car windows and kissed each other except their braces became entangled. I've no idea if it's an urban myth re reported by a newspaper/magazine at the time or if it actually happened. This would/could have happened in the late 80's or early 90s.
 
This yoochuber has put up what he claims is a vhs version of the scene, no braces!


Go straight in around 7.20 for the scene, no idea why anyone thinks we want to sit through 7 minutes of fast forwarding.
 
Although if this guy is to be believed, the first VHS release of Moonraker wasn't until 1988, whereas the cinema release was 1979. So the VHS isn't necessarily forced to be the cinema or early tv versions.
 
I wonder if the character had braces in the novelisation? I'm thinking it wasn't that unusual for novelisations to have slight or even not so slight differences from the movie (Pretty in Pink had an entirely different ending).

That may be how the idea got into many people's imagination.
 
This yoochuber has put up what he claims is a vhs version of the scene, no braces!

It's a pretty pathetic youtube. Why not show the scene full size, instead of something like a postage stamp in the middle of the screen?
 
I wonder if people are thinking she had braces simply by association with Jaws and his metallic teeth? In effect, the girl having braces would be a kind of visual pun on Jaws's own prominent dentistry.

I used to have all the Bonds on video cassette and watched them often. I don't remember her having braces, either in that scene, or when she shows up again later accompanying Jaws into space.

I do remember that blasted pigeon doing a double take at Roger Moore's gondola, though!
 
The Dolly braces topic has come up multiple times on movie (etc.) forums over the years. On one of the ones I checked yesterday (which I can't seem to locate again ... ) it was claimed Blanche Ravalec herself had stated she never wore braces in Moonraker.
 
It seems to be a case of viewers thinking she should have worn braces, so in their memories she does, and they don't like the idea that their memory is defective (well, who does?).
 
It seems to be a case of viewers thinking she should have worn braces, so in their memories she does, and they don't like the idea that their memory is defective (well, who does?).

I think part of the reason for such false memories is that she's dressed in a clearly 'nerdy little girl' motif, and similar makeup / costume setups commonly add braces as the final gloss beyond the glasses and pigtails.
 
I don't know about others, but I saw a lot of movies of that era for the first time on a knackered old black and white portable, often with not particularly great reception - I wonder sometimes if my mind just filled in the blanks.
 
If folks must tamper with old Bond movies, can they please get rid of the stupid sound effect in this scene. It spoils an amazing bit of stunt work

I've heard other people make this comment. I agree. It really trivialises such an amazing piece of stunt work.
 
BUT...just to confuse matters further, there's a guy here who claims to have located Dolly's braces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMG7ttaKoDo
His claim is that they do not visually survive the transition to a small screen, but would have been visible to a cinema audience. What you can just about see on his clip is what could be braces on her lower teeth, but not a full mouth job.

Here's my theory then: the original script demanded that Dolly had a full mouth of braces. The actress herself (a new star, after all, and something of a beauty queen) - and/or her agents- didn't like this so they demanded that she only had braces on her lower teeth, as a kind of fudge option. This was acceded to. The cinema audiences would have seen these and got the idea, and in their later memories added a full mouth of braces to complete the effect.

Not bad, eh? Mythtery sovlthed?

Next up: C3P0's silver leg!
 
The trouble with Dolly's braces is that it brings in an uncomfortable Lolita element to the relationship, since most girls wearing braces will be young teens, and Jaws must have been in his 40s. So basically if you thought Dolly wearing braces was a good idea, then you're a paedophile. Seriously though, it won't be the last time that a mass delusion strikes, just be thankful it's a benign one.
 
The trouble with Dolly's braces is that it brings in an uncomfortable Lolita element to the relationship, since most girls wearing braces will be young teens, and Jaws must have been in his 40s.
This is a bit of a loose generalisation. Both teenage boys and girls often wear orthodontic braces from early teens onwards. Girls in particular (and somewhat counter-intuitively) appear frequently willing to continue wearing corrective braces into their early/mid 20s, and can be much less affected by peer pressure and vanity than boys. So 'Dolly' could, using the shaky indicator of teeth-borne metalwork (existing, or not existing, in this plane of reality) anywhere between 13 and 26 years old (and, visually/generally, that's how old she might well be: but, I'm thinking her intended depiction is as someone aged late teens/early twenties)

So basically if you thought Dolly wearing braces was a good idea, then you're a paedophile.
Rubbish. By definition, paedophiles are those sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children that will physiologically still have their decidious 'milk' teeth.

The use of dental braces is inarguably an indicator of someone who has their adult teeth, and is not (by biological definition) physically a child. They could possibly be viewed as a young person or (very) young adult, en route to full adulthood.

Equally, they could be in their 20s (perhaps some purient elements within broader society would also consider sexual attractiveness depicted in relation to someone of this age as similarly being 'paedophilic'....the western world generally never gets this entirely right)
 
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