REMEMBERING JIMMY BOND. INTO THE 50's TV WORLD OF 'CASINO ROYALE'...

They call him "Jimmy"! James Bond (Barry Nelson) makes his first TV appearance in Casino Royale. Images: MGM/SONY TV.

Sixty years ago this April, way back in 1953, Ian Fleming's quest to write the ultimate spy novel, originally springing from his imagination in order to quell the depression of his impending marriage,  had become a popular success with the reading public, as James Bond, working ever bravely on behalf of Her Majesty's Secret Service, arrived at the Casino Royale in France to do battle over the venue's legendary gambling tables against his cold-hearted, cash needing enemy Le Chiffre (the pattern of events loosely based on some of Fleming's own experiences in and outside Word War II). But the travel writer turned author's desire to make more lucrative financial stability for himself and see his determined fictional hero of soon iconic proportions- his mirror image in so many ways- make it to the silver screen would ultimately prove less than successful and not the sure-fire thing he'd hoped it would, and should, have been. Despite all the great ingredients, the sex and violence mixed with the international jet setting locations of the time that had been so prevalent in that terrific and thrilling premier novel, Casino Royale, no one in the less ambitious early post war era of film-making land wanted to take the risk with the exciting adventure- thinking that its final realisation could so easily end up as being potentially sub B-movie-esqe material.

The stakes are high for Bond against the villainous Le Chiffre.

So desperate would Fleming be to get his super cool, supercharged character into live action reality, he decided that television was the only other avenue open to him: notably on the transatlantic side- American television being the most dominant and commercially viable, so when the chance became available for Casino Royale to be made into a one-off production (with the possible option of further adventures should it take off), within the anthology play strand of what could now be considered the rather fruitily titled Climax! Theatre, on the CBS television channel, he decided to let them do it (for the then purchasing sum of $1,000!), though just how aware Fleming would be of the changes that would be made to his hero and parts of the overall story, in the lead-up to its overall production, are unknown.

Unwilling to then have a British actor/character as their main star on an American series (attitudes that would thankfully change and become more common place from the eighties onwards),  CBS chiefs unfortunately demanded James Bond change his nationality and bring his patriotism to Uncle Sam instead. He was now "Jimmy" Bond, working for the shadowy Combined Intelligence organisation, played with cautious heroism by amiable actor Barry Nelson, then one of US television's most familiar faces. Though hardly in the Connery/Craig tradition of beefcake attitude and sly humour we've all become accustomed to over the years, Nelson, despite the unfortunate Jimmy moniker, isn't bad in the starring role, often handling the material well, playing it for real and knowing when to be serious and dangerous. Like the Dalton and Craig eras to come, he also brings some vulnerability and rawness to Bond at times and is much underrated- better than you think as the story enters its violent finale. On of cinema noir's greatest supporting actors, big-eyed, egg shaped Peter Lorre, well known for playing great villains and creepy anti-heroes of the time (especially against Humphrey Bogart), is well cast as Bond's opponent, Le Chiffre-desperate and dominant in his efforts to win his money and take out the enemy American agent at all costs. Its a real shame that Lorre couldn't have been a villain in one of the sixties Connery movies- he would've fitted it into all magnificently. Linda Christian provides the essential 50's glamour-all flowing dresses, cigarettes and immaculate hair (like one of those icy cool blonde's who could have walked out of a Hitchcock thriller) as Bond's former love, and French based policewoman/agent, Valerie Mathis (her name changed from the books Vesper Lynd-the first true Bond woman, though she remains an agent ultimately captured in order to make Bond vulnerable). Fleming originally had the character of Rene Mathis acting as Bond's go-between during the high-stakes mission- in the TV adaption, however, he is no longer present, instead replaced by a kind of not quite, but almost there, cliched British version of what would later become CIA agent Felix Leiter - Clarence Leiter, confidently played with a stiff-upper lip quality by Michael Pate - the very way that American audiences expect British characters to be played-even in todays TV environment!

Helped by Valerie Mathis (Linda Christian), Bond keeps his gun skills ready...

Overall, this first adaptation, competently handled by Charles Bennett and Anthony Ellis, has no location filming, its 48 minute duration realised in an entirely all-studio bound setting which actually proves quite atmospheric in its smoky B/W way. Many key sequences of Fleming's tale are preserved and the gambling table scenes are well done. The book's dark finale, featuring the then controversial testicles beating/torture of Bond is obviously excised-way too much for any faint-hearted TV audiences of that time to watch on screen, instead replaced with an effective and intimidating sequence where Bond is tortured in a hotel room bath, his feet damaged by Le Chiffre and his goon squad bodyguards. Thankfully, despite his injuries, Bond gets the edge and takes revenge, finally killing Le Chiffre. Gripped in Valerie's arms, a drained Bond has won the day, as the end titles abruptly cut in.

Airing live on October 21st 1954, with a pre-credits introduction hosted by William Lundigan, Casino Royale's first TV production is, I feel, genuinely under-rated, better than a lot of the soapbox selling TV of that point, briskly handled by director William H. Brown Jr. It proved a moderate success with American audiences apparently, but didn't garner enough enthusiasm from the network to want to commission a full series order for Bond's subsequent adventures (despite Fleming being asked a few years later to come up with some further potential story ideas for a series). Failing to launch 007 into new heights of international popularity, it was ultimately back to the drawing board for Bond and his first exciting adventure, its rights later sold to producer Charles K. Feldman, who turned it into a popular and wildly colourful comic book spoof in 1967, before today's iconic producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who had been steering Bond into a successful movie-making period of modern box office dominance in the 2000's, finally got their hands on the rights to the title, hurtling  the at first controversially chosen Daniel Craig into a spectacular new era for the character and the film franchise- Bond's license to kill had now never been more bloody and exciting, and a true testament to Fleming's imagination and thrill-seeking craftsmanship...

But before Craig, before Brosnan, before Moore, before them all, there was Barry Nelson-the first James Bond. Lost in time for the most part of its life (its not quite complete film print missing in television limbo, eventually recovered in the nineties), and either largely forgotten or deliberately ignored by die-hard fans worldwide, this original version of Casino Royale, regardless of how it looks in today's fast-paced, more sophisticated storytelling, shows the potential of things to come with Fleming's spy, in an interesting, if not classic, curiosity...

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