"Casino Royale" is a live 1954 television adaptation of the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. An episode of the American dramatic anthology series Climax!, the show was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, and stars Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, and Linda Christian. Nelson's character, Jimmy Bond,, is played as an American spy working for the "Combined Intelligence Agency".
Most of the largely forgotten show was uncovered by film historian Jim Schoenberger in 1981, with the ending (including credits) found later. Both copies are black and white kinescopes, but the original live broadcast was in colour. The rights to the program were acquired by MGM at the same time as the rights for the 1967 film version, clearing the legal pathway and enabling it to make the 2006 film of the same name.
Plot[]
"Combined Intelligence" agent Jimmy Bond comes under fire from an assassin. He dodges the bullets and enters Casino Royale. There he meets his British contact, Clarence Leiter, who remembers "Card Sense Jimmy Bond" from when he played the Maharajah at Deauville. While Bond explains the rules of baccarat, Leiter explains Bond's mission: to defeat Le Chiffre at baccarat and force his Soviet spymasters to "retire" him. Bond then encounters a former lover, Valerie Mathis, who is Le Chiffre's current girlfriend; he also meets Le Chiffre himself.
Bond beats Le Chiffre at baccarat, but when he returns to his hotel room, is confronted by Le Chiffre and his bodyguards, along with Mathis, who Le Chiffre has discovered is an agent of the Deuxième Bureau, France's external military intelligence agency at the time.
Le Chiffre tortures Bond in order to find out where Bond has hidden the check for his winnings, but Bond does not reveal where it is. After a fight between Bond and Le Chiffre's guards, Bond shoots and wounds Le Chiffre, saving Valerie in the process. Exhausted, Bond sits in a chair opposite Le Chiffre to talk. Mathis gets in between them, and Le Chiffre grabs her from behind, threatening her with a concealed razor blade. As Le Chiffre moves towards the door with Mathis as a shield, she struggles, breaking free slightly, and Bond is able to shoot Le Chiffre.
Cast[]
- Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond
- Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre
- Linda Christian as Valerie Mathis (a composite character of Vesper Lynd and René Mathis)
- William Lundigan as Host/Himself
- Michael Pate as Clarence Leiter
- Eugene Borden as Chef De Partie
- Jean Del Val as Croupier
- Gene Roth as Basil
- Kurt Katch as Zoltan
- Juergen Tarrach as Schultz
- Herman Belmonte as Doorman
Production[]
In 1954, CBS paid the author Ian Fleming $1,000 ($11,346 in 2023 dollars) to adapt his first novel, Casino Royale, into a one-hour television adventure as part of their dramatic anthology series Climax!, which ran between October 1954 and June 1958. It was adapted for the screen by Antony Ellis and Charles Bennett; Bennett was best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, including The 39 Steps and Sabotage. Due to the restriction of a one-hour play, the adapted version lost many of the details found in the book, although it retained its violence, particularly in Act III.
The hour-long Casino Royale episode aired on October 21, 1954, as a live production and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent James Bond, with Peter Lorre in the role of Le Chiffre, and was hosted by William Lundigan. The Bond character from Casino Royale was re-cast as an American agent, described as working for "Combined Intelligence" and supported by the British agent Clarence Leiter; "thus was the Anglo-American relationship depicted in the book reversed for American consumption".
Clarence Leiter was an agent for Station S, while being a combination of Felix Leiter and René Mathis. The name "Mathis", and his association with the Deuxième Bureau, was given to the leading lady, who is named Valérie Mathis, instead of Vesper Lynd. Reports that toward the end of the broadcast "the coast-to-coast audience saw Peter Lorre, the actor playing Le Chiffre, get up off the floor after his death and begin to walk to his dressing room", do not appear to be accurate.