Casino Royale (Climax!)

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This article is about the 1954 television adaptation, for other uses of this name, see Casino Royale.
Casino Royale (1954)

Barry Nelson as CIA Agent Jimmy Bond
Directed by William H. Brown Jr
Produced by Bretaigne Windhurst
Written by Ian Fleming (novel)
Charles Bennett
Anthony Ellis
Starring Barry Nelson
Linda Christian
Peter Lorre
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Release date(s) October 21, 1954 (USA)
Running time 51 min.
55 min. (With The Complete Ending)
Language English

Casino Royale is a 1954 television adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. It was the first film adaptation of a James Bond novel.

Contents

[edit] 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 Americanised 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

[edit] Cast

[edit] 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 21st 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.

[edit] External links

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