Nelson may have been the stiffest, most wooden star ever to play Bond, but the show retains a certain interest for its choice of villain: Peter Lorre.

Fleming’s novel had been published only a year earlier, and the entire story takes place in the book’s eponymous casino/hotel, where Bond’s mission amounts to bankrupting Le Chiffre at a game of high-stakes baccarat. There are no car chases, no elaborate enemy bases to raid, no round-the-world sightseeing. Brown oversaw the “Casino Royale” episode), and the excitement was partly limited by the format. “Climax!” was one of those ’50s live-TV series on which directors like John Frankenheimer cut his teeth (though William H. No.”īy the time Connery first played Bond in 1962, audiences had long forgotten the one-off “Casino Royale” episode of “Climax!” In fact, the telefilm was thought lost until the ’70s, when a collector stumbled across a 16mm kinescope copy at a flea market, after which it found its way to VHS, as a bonus feature on the DVD release of the disastrous 1967 “Casino Royale” and, inevitably, on YouTube (where another fan has separately uploaded the ending left off from those earlier releases). Rather, the clumsy TV movie demonstrates how easily the world’s most successful franchise - the 22 Eon-produced films have earned more than $11 billion over 50 years, not counting the upcoming “Skyfall” - might have stalled had someone other than Sean Connery been cast in “Dr. The point of beginning with “Casino Royale” isn’t merely one of completism. Over the course of the next twenty-odd weeks, we’ll be revisiting Bond’s oeuvre, film by film in chronological order, with a few off-canon digressions along the way. buzz-cut who talks of love and throws big haymaker punches. “Jimmy” is an American, for starters, and hardly the refined, martini-drinking gentleman spy we know today, but more of a gorilla with a G.I. As played by Barry Nelson, Bond is a far different character. That’s how world’s most famous secret agent might have introduced himself in the 1954 hour-long TV version of “ Casino Royale” - the first screen adaptation of the first novel in Ian Fleming’s 007 series.

Casino royale 1954 sparknotes