YouTube link to full 1954 TV version of Casino Royale

Comments

• caractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 4,108MI6 Agent

  March 2022

  thanks for posting the link @sirso , unlike the dvd, that actually has the full ending

  we have a thread about the The First Casino Royale, Climax Mystery Theater, 1954 with a bit more discussion

  
  

  its an oversimplification to say EON took over after this. More like we may be lucky nothing else got made in the next eight years, though Fleming was trying almost continuously to get somebody to buy the rights. Thunderball probably was the closest to actually being made, and given what we now know about McClory's actual abilities as a filmmaker, and the fact the budget would no doubt have been less than Dr No, it probably wouldnt have been so great either.

  Moonraker, Dr No and For Your Eyes Only were all also conceived as film or teevee projects before Fleming turned each into his next novel. I'm not sure how far along any of them were before coming to nothing, if they were simply Fleming making a pitch, or if he actually had partners involved as with Thunderball. But would audiences have been so eager to see Dr No in 1962 if they remembered an earlier film with the same character that kind of stunk?

  
  

  The First Casino Royale is pretty interesting even if it is barely recognisable as Bond. This was made just a year after the book was published, I'm not sure the book was even available in the States. I really cant imagine Fleming saw it himself unless he happened to be in the States at the time. The kinescope version we're all familiar with was only discovered sometime in the 1980s, it had been considered lost until then, a literal footnote to history, so it wouldnt have been broadcast in Britain.

  There was also a 1950s radio adaptation of Moonraker that is still completely lost. I'm plenty curious about that, and no matter how poor this Climax Mystery Theater production might seem to us today, I still like to imagine what these other abandoned 1950s attempts might have looked like if they got made.
• sirso Posts: 212MI6 Agent

  March 2022

  Thanks for your informative reply.