Casino Royale (1954) – Review

If you are out for a pub trivia night and the question arises “Who was the first person to play James Bond?” do not be so quick to yell out Sean Connery because back in 1954 CBS televised a live broadcast of an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale which starred American actor Barry Nelson, the only American to date to play Britain’s greatest spy. What’s even stranger is the fact that Nelson wasn’t an American playing a Brit as this particular adaptation makes Bond an American agent working for the “Combined Intelligence Agency.”

Aired as an entry in the CBS dramatic anthology series Climax! this adaptation of Casino Royale does follow the source material fairly closely, well, as close as you can be for an hour-long show that changes the nationality of James Bond from Brit to American. The show opens with James Bond (Barry Nelson) coming under fire while arriving at the world-famous gaming establishment Casino Royale and as the show unfolds we quickly learn that Bond has been brought in to bankrupt a notorious Russian operative named Le Chiffre (Peter Lorre) at baccarat, the reason for this is that Le Chiffre has gambled away money belonging to the Soviet Union and unless he wins big his masters will have him killed.

“Can someone please explain baccarat to me?”

Though this televised adaptation follows the plot of the novel it does take several liberties with the source material, not only is Bond no longer a British agent working for MI6 but the character of CIA operative Felix Leiter is now, for some reason, a British agent named Clarence Leiter (Michael Pate) and the book’s love interest and double agent Vesper Lynd, who was basically Bond’s personal assistant and arm candy in the book, is now Valerie Mathis (Linda Christian), a previous love of Bond’s but who is now Le Chiffre’s current girlfriend and is later revealed to be a member of France’s external military intelligence agency. Basically, to get this showdown to a reasonable length the character of Vesper Lynd was combined with that of Bond’s French contact from the novel, René Mathis.

“Darling, should we shoot the writers?”

What Bond fans will find most disconcerting is Barry Nelson’s portrayal of Bond as his performance offers none of the charm or “coolness factor” that one expects to find when watching a James Bond adventure, which was not helped by people referring to our hero as “Jimmy Bond” but I can’t blame too much of this on the actor because aside from the miscasting a lot of the script was chopped up at the last minute to make it fit the time-slot. Barry Nelson has since stated that “They went through and cut three words here, a line there, a half-a-word here, and their script ended up looking like a bad case of tic-tac-toe. I tell you it was so frightening that when I entered my only thought was, ‘Oh, God, if I can only get out of this mother!’ I was very dissatisfied with the part, I thought they wrote it poorly. No charm or character or anything.” In fact, the only reason Nelson took the part was for the chance to work with the legendary Peter Lorre.

“I should have stayed in Casablanca.”

This adaptation of Casino Royale was billed as a starring vehicle for Peter Lorre and he was absolutely fantastic as the despicable vile Le Chiffre and any moment he is on screen is pure gold, sadly, that is pretty much the only thing to recommend out of this Bond vehicle as the poor script and collapsed timeline did the story no favours. The Bond girl is weak and underwritten, which is surprising considering she’s a combination of two characters, and we get only one gadget to make an appearance – which isn’t even Bond’s but a villain’s cane that functions as a silenced gun – and we don’t even get the prerequisite car chase, which is petty much a prerequisite in a Bond adventure. Now, we do have a rather chilling torture scene, with Le Chiffre trying to force Bond to reveal where he had hidden the winnings and though it isn’t the ball-busting torture from the book it’s still fairly unsettling and Barry Nelson sells it well.

“No, Mister Bond, I expect you to bathe.”

With a meagre 50-minute running time this is the shortest Bond adaptation and that it was intended to be a pilot for a possible James Bond television series should surprise no one – anthology shows like Climax! were often used as a testing ground for future shows – and though this “pilot” was never picked up Ian Fleming did write a few spec scripts which he would later rework as short stories that would appear in his 1960 anthology For Your Eyes Only. The only real reason to track down this Bond oddity is simply for the novelty of it and, of course, watching the great Peter Lorre doing what he does best.