Casino Royale 1954 James Bond

American Agent Jimmy Bond (Barry Nelson) plays baccarat for high stakes with a Soviet agent (Peter Lorre) who needs to win to cover his embezzlement of party funds and will stop at nothing to get 80 million Francs. Season 1, Episode 3 (1954). This Casino Royale is the first screen performance of James Bond and the first adaptation of the Ian Fleming novel of the same name. In this live television broadcast from from 1954 we are introduced to James Bond before he liked his martini shaken not stirred. Casino Royale ist ein Fernsehfilm aus dem Jahr 1954, der auf Ian Flemings erstem James-Bond-Roman Casino Royale basiert. Die Sendung wurde als dritte Folge der ersten Staffel der CBS-Anthologie-Serie Climax! The performance on 21st October 1954 (8.30pm EST) was the first in CBS's 'Climax' series of dramas. CBS brought the rights for Fleming's first book for $1000. Nelson played James Bond as an American named 'card sense' Jimmy Bond; the program also featured Peter. The very first screen appearance of James Bond 007, made in 1954 for US TV channel CBS. Bond's task is to destroy the evil Le Chiffre, and his plan is to force him to lose a large sum of money at the gambling tables of Casino Royale.

• First James Bond Movie 1954
• Ian Fleming
• Casino Royale (1954)at IMDb

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Casino Royale 1954 the Columbia Broadcasting System or CBSTelevision purchased Casino Royale for a one time live presentation ontheir new anthology program Climax Mystery Theater. They paid Fleming$1000.00.

First James Bond Movie 1954

Bond Reaches Climax

In 1954, the Columbia Broadcasting System or CBSTelevision purchased Casino Royale for a one time live presentation ontheir new anthology program Climax Mystery Theater. They paid Fleming$1000.00.

Barry Nelson as Jimmy 'Card-Sense' Bond andPeter Lorre as Le Chiffre.

The $25,000 live production aired on Thursdaynight October 21, 1954 at 8:30 EST. It starred Barry Nelson as American CombinedIntelligence Agent ‘Card Sense' Jimmy Bond. Veteran actor Peter Lorre ishonored by being the first Bond villain, Le Chiffre, and Linda Christian playedthe first Bond girl Valerie Mathis. Although the production was basically astage play, many of Fleming's elements from the novel remained. The classiccard game against Le Chiffre is obviously there, however it is refreshing to seethe scene where Basil, one of Le Chiffre's henchmen, holding up his walkingcane revolver against Bond's spine only to have Bond foil the henchman'smurderous plans by falling backwards on top of the cane. A definite highlightfrom the novel.

Bond faces danger with LeChiffre's henchman who has a concealed gun inside his walking cane.
Linda Christian plays Valerie Mathis enjoys an intimate moment with Bond.

Just before airtime, the producers realized thesixty-minute production was over by three minutes.

'So they went through and cut three wordshere, a line there, a half-a-word here, and their script ended up looking like abad case of tic-tac-toe.' recalled Barry Nelson in a Starlog interview from1983. I tell you it was so frightening that when I entered (the scene) my onlythought was, ‘Oh, God, if I can only get out of this mother!'' 'Iwas very dissatisfied with the part, I thought they wrote it poorly. No charm orcharacter or anything.'

Peter Lorre agreed and saw Nelson so nervous withall the changes to the script that he commented, 'Straighten up, Barry, soI can kill you!'

For decades afterwards, Bond fans had wonderedwhy Barry Nelson was chosen for the role. However, hismain reason for accepting the part was simply to work with Peter Lorre. Nelson was a great admirer of Lorre's work and felt he might never get anotheropportunity to work with him again.

The live performance was considered lost on thepretense that it was not filmed on a 16mm kinescope telecine. However, in1981 a Chicago airline executive named Jim Schoenberger discovered, whilesifting through old film canisters of presumably the 1967 version of CasinoRoyale, the black and white film strip. Quickly he ran the filmthrough a projector and found a pristine copy of the 1954 production. Thefilm had its first public performance at the James Bond Weekend in July 1981. Barry Nelson was also in attendance.

VHS and DVD copies are available including oneVHS version from Spyguise that hasan additional 60 seconds where Le Chiffre is shot not once, but twice beforesuccumbing to an eternal sleep.

As if the future of the TV production of CasinoRoyale's fate was foreshadowed in the first few seconds of the liveproduction, when a prop gun misfired, so would the novel for the next fiftyyears misfire on the theater screen.

From A Russian, With Love?

In 1955, flamboyant Russian actor and directorGregory Ratoff was in Cairo, Egypt. According to the story by screenwriterLorenzo Semple, Jr. (he would also pen the 1960's Batman TV series andthe screenplay to Never Say Never Again) , 'Gregory had been actingin a film titled The Royal Bed, which was about King Farouk. It was a bigrip-off. Everyone was trying to rob as much money as possible from the Italianbackers, who weren't allowed into the country. Gregory stole 10,000 pounds in cash,and needed a way to get it out of Egypt. He got down on his knees at theCairo airport and prayed: ‘As God is my witness, if I get through with thiscash, I'm going to buy a TIME magazine when we land in Athens, and use themoney to purchase film rights to the first book I read a review of'.'

The book turned out to be Casino Royale.

Ratoff borrowed money from then- head of 20^thCenturyFox, Darryl Zanuck and long time friend and producer Charles K. Feldman and paidFleming $6000.00 for the film rights. During the next five years, Ratoff triedto bring James Bond to the silver screen - unsuccessfully.

'I was a bright young guy fresh out ofcollege.' said Semple, 'Gregory hired me to write the screenplay. Iworked without pay, but it was a great deal of fun. We traveled around the worldwhile he gambled in casinos, supposedly doing research. He was too old-fashionedto work, so I would sit at the typewriter for four or five hours a day inwhatever hotel we were staying in, and just turn out pages and pages of scenes.I probably wrote several scripts during a year of traveling throughout Europe.Gregory thought the story was too silly. He said: ‘Nobody believe this JamesBond, so we make him into woman. Then, we make great movie.' The idea was towrite it as a vehicle for actress Susan Hayward.'

Flamboyant actor and director Gregory Ratoffenvisioned actress Susan Hayward as secret agent Jane Bond.

On December 14, 1960, Gregory Ratoff died fromleukemia and his widow was left holding the proverbial empty bank account. Shewas forced to sell any film properties her late husband owned to get out of debt.Feldman was one of the creditors to the Ratoff estate. The former lawyer turnedtalent scout and producer was handed the film rights to Casino Royale.

A Cry to Battle

Ian Fleming

Feldman was one of Hollywood's most intelligentand cultivated talent agents. Handsome, tanned and sophisticated, He was thefull definition of success. His yearly salary in 1933 (at the height of theGreat Depression) was approximately $500,000 before taxes. His company, FamousArtists, specialized in bringing new and aspiring talent to the studio system.His 300 client list included John Wayne, Richard Burton, Greta Garbo, TyronePower, William Holden, George Raft, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe.

Born April 26, 1905 in New York City. One of sixchildren whose family name was Gould. Left as an orphan, he was adopted by theSamuel Feldman family of Bayonne, New Jersey. The family moved to California afew years later. By college, Feldman took up law at the University of Californiaat Los Angeles. His first contact with the movie industry occurred during schoolvacations when he worked at the studios. One of his earliest jobs was as anassistant cameraman for director John (The Searchers) Ford.

Feldman started his own law practice in Hollywoodand specialized in the contractual aspects of the film industry. He came up withthe idea of creating jobs for his clients instead of fighting for the fewavailable ones. This was the origin of what became known as the ‘package deal'.For example, after buying a story idea for as little as $2,500, he found anunemployed writer, actor, director and producer. He once said, 'I didn'tgo into competition with the studios. I just bought what they didn't want orhad passed up. I would wrap a story up, then stick an important name on thelabel, usually the name of a star or top director. The rest was easy. Noproducer in his right mind would turn down a deal like that.'

During his years as a producer, Feldman wouldbring to the screen films that Hollywood was afraid to touch. Films suchas A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, The SevenYear Itch, and What's New, Pussycat?

After listening to an inspiring speech in 1942 bythen U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace, Feldman had a brainstorm of an idea. He conceived an episodic film that would highlight war fronts during WWII. Thesix hour film was to be titled 'Battle Cry' and enlisted anarmy of writers including Ben Hecht and Pearl Buck. He even tried to convincethe studio heads to make this film on a non-commercial charity basis. Manyfamous actors and actresses agreed to volunteer their time for this epicproduction and were promised that they would only work 12 days. A list of famousactors included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, IdaLupino, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, Leslie Howard,Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Merle Oberon, Jean Arthur, MargaretSullivan, John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, and George Raft were all at one timecommitted. Film directors Lewis Milestone, Alexander Korda, and Howard Hawksamong others were being touted to direct their own segments. Only one scene wasfilmed and that was of a burning wheat field in upper state California beforeJack Warner sent word to shut down production because of escalating cost.

Feldman's epic idea may have gone up in smokebut it would eventually find its way into Casino Royale 25 years later.

Feldman had many dalliances, according to sources,with some of Hollywood's most glamorous ladies. He often gave lavish gifts tohis clients and kept close ties to studio moguls such as David O. Selznick, JackWarner, and Darryl Zanuck. Only one studio head refused to do business withFeldman - MGM's Louis B. Mayer.

In 1933, Feldman met actress Jean Howard at aparty in Beverly Hills. According to Ms. Howard, it was ‘love at first sight.'Unfortunately, she was also the girlfriend to Mayer and would cause such a stirthat Mayer would forbid any business transactions with Feldman and FamousArtists.

Charles K. Feldman, Jean Howard, and LouisB. Mayer. The love triangle that eventually affected Cubby Broccoli's workrelationship with MGM Studios.

It was during this time that one of Feldman'sassociates, and aspiring producer, was escorting several new talented actorsonto the MGM lot. This young associate was 24 year old Albert Romolo (Cubby)Broccoli and he was about to learn one of Hollywood's biggest lessons.

According to Broccoli's autobiography Whenthe Snow Melts, he was there to meet with producer Pandro Berman. Thereceptionist allowed the actors to enter Berman's office, but not Cubby. Hewas barred from the studio lot. Feeling dejected and confused, he returned toFamous Artists and explained the situation to Feldman, who remained silent.Eventually Cubby discovered the truth about his boss and Mayer, and would workon and off with Famous Artists thru the 30s, 40s and early 1950s.

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Watching the 1954 Climax! version of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale is a jarring experience. It defamiliarizes one of the most famous stories about one of cinema's most famous characters. But only in retrospect. The oddness of Casino Royale is that it teases us with an alternate iconography for James Bond. Imagine a world where Eon Productions never formed, where Sean Connery never made the role an icon, and Goldfinger, Moonraker, and Skyfall never happened. Imagine a world where James Bond was an American! It might look very similar to the James Bond we see in Climax!. It's a dispiriting thought experiment, but also fascinating, like a television version of an alternate reality.

Before Dr. No premiered in 1962 and Sean Connery redefined masculinity on the silver screen, James Bond was just a character in the novels of Ian Fleming. In 1954, there were only two published novels in the series, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die. CBS chose to adapt the first novel for their live anthology television series, Climax!. Fleming agreed and CBS paid him a marginal sum for the rights to the novel. Casino Royale aired live on October 21st in 1954 as the third episode of Climax!. It disappeared from public consciousness until the 1980s when film historian Jim Schoenberger located it, albeit without its final credits. We're lucky Schoenberger found it, as it's a fascinating oddity.

The plot of the TV film is largely similar to the novel, although condensed for TV and changed to suit its Eisenhower-era American audience. Barry Nelson plays James Bond as a cool American 'combined intelligence' agent working to take down the Russian spy, Le Chiffre (Peter Lorre), during a game of baccarat. Michael Pate co-stars as Bond's ally, the loyal British agent Clarence Leiter, and Linda Christian rounds out the cast as Valerie Mathis, Le Chiffre's girlfriend who is secretly working for the French secret service.

Every Bond fan will be able to spot where Casino Royale differs from its source material. For example, they'll know that Mathis combines aspects of the Vesper Lynd character with René Mathis, the French agent assigned to the case in the novel. She's given a past relationship with Bond, but completely sidelined narratively, operating mostly as a damsel in distress. Other changes, like the condensation of the plotline to the events in and around the casino are understandable in order to accommodate the one-hour live television format. The most interesting change is the swapping of Bond and Leiter's national identities. It reveals the most interesting aspects of this modest television production, clarifying 1950s American attitudes towards both the British and themselves.

Although the Bond franchise has always targeted American audiences, it has never tempered its distinct British identity to do so. The Climax! version of James Bond goes too far in catering to its presumptive audience. First of all, it makes Bond an American. That means he's no longer a cold, mysterious gentleman, but instead a rugged, affable American who speaks and shoots straight. The producers likely believed that the British character as written would never appeal to American audiences—perhaps they disliked the classism inherent in Fleming's Bond. Whatever the reason, they made Bond resemble a middle-class American hero familiar from the big screen at the time, while relegating the British presence to the supporting character, Clarence Leiter.

In Fleming's novels, Leiter is an American named Felix. He's a rough-and-tumble spy, with a weakness for ladies and a high tolerance for alcohol. Clarence Leiter is a refined gentleman, loyal to Bond, but hardly tough or sexy. He's a tad feminine. Michael Pate plays him like a butler as spy, always subservient to Bond's course of action. In one scene he talks his way out of gunpoint, using the arrival of a waiter to cover his exit, but you never get the sense Leiter will turn violent to escape. You can hardly imagine him getting in a fight, presumably because Americans don't think Brits get their hands dirty. Leiter is good at his job, but he's not exciting. He's distant and stuffy.

Bond, on the other hand, is familiar and adventurous. He's often called 'Jimmy,' as if he's the good ol' boy you can count on when you're in a tight spot. He's violent and brave, but he's not cool or mysterious. He's also hardly charming. Nelson may be a memorable actor in other films (I especially like him as the manager of the Overlook Hotel, Stuart Ullman, in The Shining) but here he reads as alternatingly dull and hokey. When he's trying to be cool, he's apping William Holden, even trying to mimic his vocal patterns. As such, he often comes across as flippant instead of clever. He reads as a dull American hero—hardly James Bond, Agent 007 of Her Majesty's Secret Service. It's as if the producers took what they presumed were the American attributes of the James Bond character, added a pinch of the silver screen spy persona, and distilled these characteristics into their Bond, while pushing the rest of the character from the novel into the emasculated Leiter. The result is two characters who are little more than emblems for their respective nations, a pissing match between an American man and a British strawman.

Peter Lorre fares better as Le Chiffre, overplaying the character's confidence during baccarat and enjoying the sadism of the torture scenes. Lorre always excelled at playing deranged villains, so it's not a stretch for him to play Le Chiffre. Still, he remains the sole performer to actually excite while onscreen. When he's having Bond's nails removed to suss out information (the movie understandably censors aspects of the novel, namely Le Chiffre's mode of torture. Even nowadays it'd be nearly unthinkable for network television to show a man being tortured by damaging his testicles), Lorre revels in his power over Bond. The other part of Casino Royale that is unquestionably successful is its explanation of baccarat. As baccarat was likely unfamiliar to the majority of Climax!'s audience, the film goes to great lengths to explain the game to the viewer. They do so by having Bond explain the game to Leiter as a cover to allow them to speak privately together. Although I have read the novel Casino Royale as well as a few tutorials of the game online, I've never entirely understood the baccarat betting system. Casino Royale clarified it for me. Although the way the film justifies explaining the rules is clumsy, it's remarkably effective.

As for the filmmaking, since it was originally a live telecast, Casino Royale is visually unremarkable. Most cuts are utilized to mask theatrical changes. The camera always stays on one side of the characters. The overhead lighting is bright and flat, so as to light as many character's faces as possible. It's interesting to note that Climax! was one of the few network programs of the 1950s to be broadcast in colour, although only black and white versions of its programming remain. Perhaps a colour version of Casino Royale would have added some visual interest.

The Climax! version of Casino Royale made me thankful for the franchise we got. Richmond virginia casino. Ian Fleming's debonair spy could have turned into just another alluring killer from a trade paperback, fodder for the occasional TV movie or serial plot. Instead we got the Aston Martin DB5 and the Lotus Esprit, the raid on Ernst Stavro Blofeld's Piz Gloria fortress and the tank chase through the streets of St. Petersburg. Casino Royale gives us a fascinating glimpse into a world without Bond as we know him. It makes me glad we live in a world with James, and not 'Jimmy,' Bond.

Casino Royale (1954)at IMDb

4 out of 10

Climax! a.k.a. Climax Mystery Theater (1954-1958, CBS)

Casino Royale (1954, USA)

Directed by William H. Brown Jr.; written by Charles Bennett and Anthony Ellis based on Ian Fleming's novel; presented by William Lundigan; starring Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, Linda Christian, Michael Pate, Eugene Borden, Jean Del Val, Gene Roth.