“The name’s Califragilisticexpialidocious… Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Those words were almost spoken on screen. Sort of.Now nearly 100 years old, Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke has had a glorious career, playing everything from a clumsy comedy writer to an affable chimney sweep to a sleuthing doctor. But he almost had a chance to play James Bond, the great actor recently revealed to the Today Show (via EW). “Cubby Broccoli came to me, and said, ‘Would you like to be Bond?'” Van Dyke said, referring to the late head of Eon Productions, the company that controlled the Bond adaptation rights from 1962 until earlier this year.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Van Dyke’s revelation is shocking today, not just because it means a classic actor could have taken a very unusual role. With Daniel Craig‘s much-lauded tenure having ended with the death of his Bond in No Time to Die and the adaptation rights for the Ian Fleming character having been sold to Amazon, the series is in a period of transition. But while there’s been plenty of talk of casting a non-white actor in the role for the first time, with Idris Elba and Dev Patel being the online favorites, absolutely no one is considering letting an American take on 007.But back around the time that Sean Connery was stepping away from the character, other nationalities were in play. The Australian George Lazenby took over for Connery for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but when he decided not to return for a follow-up, Eon hired John Gavin of Psycho and Spartacus to play Bond in Diamonds Are Forever.When Connery agreed to return, Gavin was kicked to the curb. And when Connery did leave for good (at least as far as Eon’s concerned, having reprised the role for Never Say Never Again) and his successor Roger Moore considered retiring, Brocolli once again looked at an American, nearly hiring James Brolin for the part. Brolin even did screen tests for Octopussy, a film for which Moore eventually returned.Even more than those folks, Dick Van Dyke made a certain sense, as he starred in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a kid’s movie produced by Cubby Brocolli and based on an Ian Fleming novel. But, as with the other Yanks, Van Dyke couldn’t get over the character’s inherent Englishness. “I said, ‘Have you heard my British accent?'” he joked, miming that the discussion then ended abruptly. But, for him, it went further than that.“It would have been a great experience,” Van Dyke admitted, but also worried that his fans wouldn’t have “accepted” him in the part, to say nothing of the Bond aficionados. This isn’t to say that Van Dyke hasn’t played his share of villains, having played a grouchy silent star in 1969’s The Comic and a murderous photographer in an episode of Columbo, as well as traumataizing a generation of kids as the surprise villain in Night at the Museum. It’s just that he never could see himself as the type of guy who would order a shaken martini instead of singing Chim Chim Cher-ee.The post Dick Van Dyke Recalls His Very Good Reason for Not Becoming James Bond appeared first on Den of Geek.