Casino Royale (Climax!)

Template:Infobox Film Bond Casino Royale is a 1954 television adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The show is the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel and stars Barry Nelson and Peter Lorre.

Background

In 1954, producer and director Gregory Ratoff of CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt Casino Royale into a television adventure as part of its Climax! series. The hour-long Casino Royale episode aired on October 21, 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent "Card Sense" James "Jimmy" Bond, with Peter Lorre in the role of Le Chiffre. For this Americanized version of the story, Bond is described as an agent for "Combined Intelligence," while the characters of Felix Leiter and Rene Mathis from the original novel morphed together into "Clarence Leiter," a British agent for Station S. The name "Mathis" passed to the leading lady, christened Valerie Mathis instead of Vesper Lynd.

Casino Royale was the first of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. His second, Live and Let Die appeared only six months before the broadcast of this first film adaptation of a James Bond novel in 1954. This first film rendition of the first James Bond novel bears nearly none of the characteristics of mood, tone, and theme that would effuse from its ilk of the next fifty years.

The hour long showing itself is split into three acts:

• Act I: Opening -- Opening of Baccarat scene
• Act II: Opening of Baccarat Scene -- Hotel Room finale Opening
• Act III: Hotel Room finale Opening -- Ending

Plot

The movie begins with the host, William Lundigan, begins the tele-movie by talking about the shoe in baccarat.

Act I begins James Bond (Barry Nelson) walks toward the door at Casino Royale, but he is shot at, shooter unknown. But he shelters himself behind a pole and the shooter gets away. The casino director offered his sincerest apologies. Bond then goes and plays at a table, and meets Clarence Leiter (Michael Pate). Leiter remembers "Card-Sence Jimmy Bond" from the game when he played the Maharajah of Deauville. Leiter also says that he is an agent of Station S. and is mentioned that Bond is an agent of Combined Intellegence (not the CIA, that is "Central" Intellegence Agency). Bond is working with Letter to play Le Chiffre (Peter Lorre), chief Soviet agent through Leningrad Section 3 through Paris.

Le Chiffre has been gambling Soviet funds and is down several million francs. Leiter also tells him that Le Chiffre carries three blades.

A work in progress...

Cast

• Barry Nelson - James Bond
• Peter Lorre - Le Chiffre
• Linda Christian - Valerie Mathis
• Michael Pate - Clarence Leiter
• Eugene Borden - Chef DeParte
• Jean DeVal - Croupier
• Gene Roth - Basil
• Kurt Katch - Zoltan
• Unknown actor - Zuroff (this is possible from incomplete credits)
• William Lundigan - Host/Himself

Legacy

After the production of Casino Royale, CBS invited Fleming to write 32 episodes over a two-year period for a television show based on the James Bond character. Fleming agreed and began to write outlines for this series. When nothing ever came of this, however, Fleming grouped and adapted three of the outlines into short stories and released the 1960 anthology For Your Eyes Only along with an additional two new short stories.

This was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, and was made before the formation of EON Productions. When MGM eventually obtained the rights to the 1967 film version of Casino Royale, it also received the rights to this television episode.

According to Lee Pfeiffer, a well known James Bond expert, the Casino Royale episode was lost for decades after its first broadcast on 21 October 1954. It was not until early 1980s that the show was finally found and released on VHS. It also aired on TBS as part of a Bond film marathon. However, the VHS release and TBS presentation did not include the full finale of the adaptation, which was at that point still lost. Eventually, the missing footage (minus the last few seconds of the credits) was found and included on a Spy Guise & Cara Entertainment VHS release. Spy Guise offered pre-orders for a DVD release, but rights issues with MGM forced them to scuttle the plans. MGM subsequently included the truncated version on its DVD of the 1967 Casino Royale.

In 2007, a discount DVD from Digiview Entertainment was released that featured the truncated version, possibly sourced off the 1967 MGM Casino Royale DVD. It is generally found in stores such as Dollar General and Wal-Mart, usually for the price of one dollar. It is a single disc with the only special feature being previews of other Digiview DVDs. The DVD does feature some high production values including motion chapter selection and an attractive menu system that also plays an isolated version of the films main theme.

External links

• Casino Royale (1954) at IMDb
• The Curious History of Casino Royale at MI6.co.uk
• Casino Royale (1954) Coverage at MI6.co.uk
• The film on YouTube