This article originally appeared in 007 MAGAZINE Issue #18 and is revised and expanded here with many additional images.

After the unsuccessful showing of Casino Royale Fleming sold the rights to Gregory Ratoff for only $6,000. The unused storylines that Fleming had written for the projected series of Bond TV adventures were later to appear in his collection of short stories FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, published in 1960.

In retrospect the TV production of Casino Royale is still worth viewing, and remains entertaining even after 34 years gathering dust. The story had to be changed for TV and some characters were dispensed with, others were amalgamated to suit the screenwriter's plot. The most alarming, but quite understandable alteration was that Fleming's character became ‘Card sense Jimmy Bond’, an American CIA agent. Felix Leiter was changed accordingly to Clarence Leiter (Michael Pate) of the British Secret Service, and was portrayed as a typical ‘plummy’ upper class Englishman, but with a hard edge. It is interesting to note how one could transpose Nelson and Pate in their roles to match our contemporary impressions of Bond and Leiter. Ironically, Pate cornered the market in Hollywood playing Red Indians [most notably as the bloodthirsty Apache renegade Sierra Charriba in Major Dundee (1965)] in a remarkable career that has spanned over half a century.

The heroine of the novel, Vesper Lynd — was in fact working for the villains SMERSH — in the TV version is combined with Rene Mathis, Bond's friend from the Deuxieme Bureau to become Valerie Mathis, secret agent for the Bureau. Linda Christian's attractive blonde hardly conjures up Fleming's femme fatale with “very black” hair, but after the other liberties taken with the story this hardly matters. Scriptwriters Antony Ellis and Charles Bennett dispensed with various secondary characters from the novel: Mr. & Mrs. Muntze — the German couple working for Le Chiffre — who eavesdrop on Bond's movements in his hotel room; and the ‘Two Men in Straw Hats’ — the bomb-carrying Bulgarian SMERSH agents.

Peter Lorre may not have fitted Fleming's description of Le Chiffre exactly, but what he lacks in physical similarity is amply compensated for by his enormously entertaining and subtle performance. The scenes where Le Chiffre questions Bond about where he has hidden his winnings show how Lorre beautifully underplays the violent streak which runs through the character, making him even more menacing.