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.

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. We’re lucky Schoenberger found it, as it’s a fascinating oddity. It disappeared from public consciousness until the 1980s when film historian Jim Schoenberger located it, albeit without its final credits. Casino Royale aired live on October 21st in 1954 as the third episode of Climax!. Fleming agreed and CBS paid him a marginal sum for the rights to the novel. CBS chose to adapt the first novel for their live anthology television series, Climax!. In 1954, there were only two published novels in the series, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die.

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

Watching the 1954 Climax! version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale is a jarring experience.

Moonraker Casino Royale Climax