Page to Screen: Casino Royale

Ian Fleming regarded the secret service as a “dirty trade,” and he knew better than most what he was talking about. As a Naval Intelligence man, he rubbed shoulders with his fair share of secret agents and was familiar with their business. Indeed, Fleming himself had a hand in top-secret missions during WWII, such as Operation Mincemeat, a ploy to throw the Third Reich off the scent by deploying a corpse carrying fake documents in the waters off the coast of Spain. 

Fleming was also from a privileged upbringing, so when he got around to turning his knowledge of the secret service into a rousing spy novel, he furnished the dirty trade of 007’s adventures with the finer things in life. Therein lies the huge appeal of the James Bond universe: Our man might be out in the field snapping necks, putting himself in the line of fire, and thwarting deadly villains, but he does it within an exotic sphere of glamorous locations, expensive cars, beautiful women, and luxurious living.

Creator of James Bond, the suave and debonair Ian Fleming

Reading Casino Royale for the first time after decades of watching the many eras of Bond movies is an interesting experience. Fleming’s Bond is vulnerable, callous, and wary, a pawn in a global chess match moved around the board by his superiors back in Whitehall, via handlers in Jamaica. It really feels like he’s out on the edge and the prospect of death is very real - a scene where two hapless Bulgarian goons blow themselves up while trying to take him out is surprisingly graphic. 

Some of his faults come into sharper focus, too. From a modern perspective, there is a lot of hand-wringing about Bond’s womanising, especially in earlier films in the series. That perceived misogyny is laid bare in Fleming’s novel. In Bond’s eyes, women should stay at home with the washing up and not interfere in the matters of men, and there is genuine hatred in the way he uses the word “bitch.” Fleming was known as something of a womaniser and misogynist himself, so it is not hard to deduce that he may be writing what he knows beyond his insight into British Intelligence.

Fleming also liked the finer things in life. While his writing style is as cool, crisp, and efficient as his brooding hero, some warmth perceptibly creeps into the prose when he describes the luxuries that Bond uses as a salve for his loneliness out in the field. His hobbies are his car, high-stakes gambling, and bedding women. He has a cultured taste in tailor-made cigarettes, fine booze, and high-end delicacies. A telling moment is when he apologises to Vesper Lynd for paying so much attention to detail when ordering a meal. It is one of his few real comforts in a profession marked by solitude, where every meal might be his last.

The seed of Casino Royale came in 1941 when Fleming visited Lisbon with Naval Intelligence. On arrival, he learned that Nazi agents frequented the Casino Estoril. He claimed that he struck upon the idea of relieving them of his funds at the baccarat table. Taking on one German spy, he had some luck before he got cleaned out himself. Fleming’s commanding officer had a different version of the tale, which was far more dour but still informative. Jennings claimed that the casino was merely full of dull regular gamblers, and Fleming had remarked how much more dramatic it would be if they were facing off against the enemy across the tables. Whichever version of the story is true, it shows how Fleming had a knack for taking real-life incidents and spinning them into thrilling material for a novel.

After the war, Fleming worked as a journalist and formed a network of foreign correspondents. He finally got around to writing his long-fomenting spy novel in 1952 to stave off anxiety over his upcoming marriage to Ann, a wealthy British socialite. Sitting down at his typewriter at Goldeneye, his Jamaican retreat, he kept to a strict regime of 2000 words per day to complete Casino Royale, in which we meet British secret agent James Bond on a mission to bankrupt Le Chiffre, a corpulent Soviet agent who has got SMERSH breathing down his neck after using funds to buy a string of brothels.

Published in 1953, the book sold out quickly in Britain but performed poorly in the United States. From that point, Fleming churned out a new James Bond novel almost every year until his death in 1965, plus several short stories. Live and Let Die and Moonraker followed in ‘54 and ‘55, all the way up to The Man With The Golden Gun, which was released posthumously in 1965.

Despite the tepid reception to James Bond in the States, Casino Royale got its first screen adaptation in 1954. American television network CBS paid Fleming $1000 to turn it into a one-hour episode for the show Climax! Barry Nelson as crew-cutted, baggy-jacketed James “Jimmy” Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. Completists can find it on YouTube - it is slow and stagey, but Lorre is well cast as the villain.

The following year, Fleming sold the film rights to the novel to Gregory Ratoff for $6000. Ratoff was a colourful character; born in Russia, he escaped the Bolshevik uprising and headed to the United States where he tried to break into acting. His heavy accent was initially a sticking point until it eventually found him steady work as a character actor and screen heavies. Later, he became a director and producer, and all three combined in Egypt where he was making a comedy called Abdullah the Great. Around this time, he decided to purchase the film rights to a novel. 

One version of events sounds like something out of a spy novel, claiming that Ratoff absconded with a large sum of cash from his Italian backers and swore to buy the rights to the first book he saw in Time Magazine if he made it out of the country safely.

Whatever the truth, Ratoff bought Casino Royale, and he was very serious about producing a big screen version. Over the next few years he toured Europe scouting locations, gambling, speaking to the press, and even speculating about switching the character’s gender.

Around the same time, Fleming himself was in talks with various producers about giving other Bond adventures the film treatment. The casting merry-go-round we’re familiar with today was just as fervent back in the late ‘50s; producer Kevin McClory favoured Trevor Howard for the role while Fleming liked Peter Finch, the Aussie actor who would later win a posthumous Oscar for his performance in Sidney Lumet’s Network.

Bond’s journey to the big screen picked up further steam in 1960 when the President of 20th Century Fox, Spyros P. Skouras, announced his intention to make several British films including one based on Casino Royale. Later that year, the Los Angeles Times reported that Ratoff would direct with Finch in the lead role. He never got the chance, however. Ratoff passed away in December 1960 and his wife sold the rights to the book to his former agent, Charles K. Feldman, who would be the man who finally brought Fleming’s first novel to the big screen.

Charles K Feldman dancing with Marilyn Monroe 

Before then, a new turn of events in 1961 appeared to leave Casino Royale out in the cold. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli (a former employee of Feldman) snapped up the film rights to all Fleming’s other novels, and bigger names including Cary Grant, David Niven, and James Mason were suddenly in the frame to play Bond. Saltzman stated to the press that he would prefer to cast an unknown, which is where former milkman Sean Connery entered the fray. 

The casting choice didn’t initially go down well with Ian Fleming, who felt that Connery wasn’t suave enough to play James Bond - the author wanted someone like David Niven instead. Saltzman got his way and turned Connery over to director Terence Young, who refined the Scottish actor in time for his first outing as 007 in Dr. No. The film was a hit and Fleming was forced to change his tune.

While all this was going on, Feldman was still in the background clinging to the rights to Casino Royale and hoping to cash in on the new James Bond fever. Even President John F. Kennedy was in on the action, listing From Russia, With Love as one of his top 10 books. Feldman attempted to get things moving by approaching Howard Hawks to helm with Cary Grant in the lead and screenwriter Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep) adapting, but the director dropped out after seeing Dr. No.

Next up, Feldman approached renowned Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht to have a crack. Archive files reveal that Hecht may have had a hand in trying to adapt the novel as early as 1957 when Feldman first sent him a script to spruce up, and Hecht toiled on his own version for four months in 1964. Even a writer as prodigious as Hecht had trouble with the novel’s brevity and lack of action. To solve those issues, Hecht proposed a lengthy globe-trotting first act to the movie to punch up the action and pad out the running time. 

In one draft, Hecht toyed with an intriguing plot point that was surely the seed of how the 1967 version of Casino Royale turned out. He introduced an unnamed American agent meeting with M, who gives him the name “James Bond.” M goes on to explain that after the real Bond died, MI6 had been giving the moniker to several agents to keep his memory alive and also confuse the hell out of the enemy. 

It’s fun to think about this idea on a meta level in relation to the canonical EON series of Bond movies. Ever wonder why Bond is always so blasé about passing his real name out to anyone who will listen? That would make sense if Bond wasn’t his real name and there were several other agents out there calling themselves the same thing.

Hecht finished his Casino Royale screenplay in October 1964, shortly after Goldfinger premiered in theatres. Beyond the globe-trotting adventures of the first act, it broadly followed the plot of Fleming’s novel. Sadly, Hecht’s version never made it to the screen. He died of a heart attack on April 18th 1964, just a few days after writing to Feldman about the completed work.

In 2011, British spy novelist Jeremy Duns uncovered Hecht's lost scripts. Describing them in The Telegraph, he wrote:

“All the pages in Hecht's papers are gripping, but the material from April 1964 is phenomenal, and it's easy to imagine it as the basis for a classic Bond adventure. Hecht's treatment of the romance element is powerful and convincing, even with the throwaway ending, but there is also a distinctly adult feel to the story. It has all the excitement and glamour you would expect from a Bond film, but is more suspenseful, and the violence is brutal rather than cartoonish.”

Feldman tried striking a deal with Saltzman and Broccoli with a view to borrowing Sean Connery for his movie, but his unreasonable demands scuppered that idea. Broccoli claimed that Feldman wanted 75 percent of the profits. Broccoli laughed off the deal and a desperate Feldman next tried to get Connery to switch sides. Connery said he’d only do it for a million dollars, which Feldman wouldn’t entertain.

Perhaps the combination of Hecht’s death and a failure to negotiate a deal with Connery changed the direction that Feldman’s Casino Royale would take. Although Hecht’s screenplay was, by all accounts, a well-written and exciting adaptation of Fleming’s novel, it began to morph into a zany spoof of Bond movies instead. Not content with the script, Feldman had several more writers have a go at it including Billy Wilder, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern, Wolf Mankowitz, and Woody Allen. An unknown actor named Terence Cooper was hired, while big names including David Niven, Ursula Andress, Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, and Allen were all drafted into the cast. Then, over a year after filming began in January 1966, we got the most bizarre film to ever carry the James Bond name.

Casino Royale (1967)

As regular readers of the blog will know, I’m a big fan of cult flicks and I have a pretty high tolerance for strange movies, but even I was completely bewildered by Casino Royale. Woody Allen said in an interview that Feldman had wanted to make a film that would “eliminate the Bond films forever.” Indeed, Feldman’s movie is so maniacal in its attempt to lampoon the early franchise that it is tempting to conclude that the producer was so embittered that he turned into the equivalent of a Bond villain, concocting a grandiose plan to blow 007 off the face of the Earth.

The result is a proto-Austin Powers, minus the focus and the laughs. While Mike Myers was affectionate in skewering the hoary old tropes of Bond movies, there is something cynically frivolous about the rampant chaos of Casino Royale. The publicity stated that the five credited directors each worked without knowing what the other four were doing, which is all too apparent as the film careens from one rambling set piece to the next. With three credited screenwriters plus many more who didn’t get their name on the screen, it also never lands on a coherent comic tone. As a result, it is excruciatingly unfunny, with only Woody Allen generating a few chuckles with his trademark shtick. 

It is such an obnoxious exercise in indulgence that feels like a deliberate act of sabotage. Unlike Austin Powers, however, which so successfully took down the tired old formula of the Bond series, Feldman only seems intent on blowing up his own movie. What madness is this?

What is even more baffling is that Casino Royale is so mirthless and boring despite the terrific cast that Feldman managed to assemble. Terence Cooper, initially hired to play Bond, ended up relegated to a small part as another British agent after Feldman decided to hire Peter Sellers for the lead role instead. Sellers was at the peak of his comic and acting abilities at the time after the success of The Pink Panther and two successful collaborations with Stanley Kubrick in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove; his treble role in the latter earned him an Oscar nomination. 

Sellers’ ability as an actor was never in doubt and his marriage to Swedish model Britt Ekland in 1964 also gave him an extra level of glamour, fitting for the role of Evelyn Tremble, a baccarat expert masquerading as James Bond to defeat Le Chiffre. Unfortunately, it was around that period of his life that Sellers’ mental health issues became more obvious on set, and his erratic behaviour eventually got him kicked off the film.

Despite his lucrative fee and top billing, Sellers is plainly ill-at-ease in the role. He is also wildly unfunny, dashing off a few offensive comedy accents in lieu of a performance. As Joseph McGrath, the original director, said:

“[Sellers] never got the voice. I think he saw himself as David Niven. He doesn’t seem to add up to any character at all in the film. He seems to be lost.”

Nevertheless, Sellers is present in the one genuinely classy moment in the entire film. As Dusty Springfield croons Burt Bacharach’s Oscar-nominated “The Look of Love,” he and Ursula Andress look pretty splendid walking in slow-motion behind a huge fish tank for their love scene.

Peter Sellers as James Bond with Ursula Andress

Also to the credit of Sellers, he suggested Orson Welles to play Le Chiffre. It was an excellent piece of casting, although the two men grew to loathe each other on set. Sellers was jealous and insecure about Welles’ reputation and talent and got into fisticuffs with McGrath because he didn’t want to appear in the same shot as the older actor. Welles, never one to mince his words, dismissed Sellers as “a fucking amateur.”

Welles wasn’t the only person who had problems with Sellers’ eccentricities. Jacqueline Bisset, playing Miss Goodthighs, was slightly injured when Sellers fired a blank cartridge at her during a scene when Trembly is trying to shoot the cork off a bottle of champagne. While it was put down as an accident, there was a suspicion that Sellers fired it directly at her in anger.

Later, after Sellers went AWOL to patch things up with Ekland in Sweden after a fallout, he was fired from the picture. This explains why his character is killed off so abruptly after the torture scene, which is transformed from Fleming’s painful ball-whipping to a psychedelic freak-out.

David Niven as James Bond

As for the rest of the cast, David Niven finally got to play the “real” James Bond, now retired and sporting an unfathomable stammer in the film; Woody Allen came in to play Jimmy Bond, the eventual villain of the piece; Andress completed the connection with the EON series after her iconic role in Dr. No; John Huston came in as one of the many directors, reportedly to clear his gambling debts, and also played a short-lived M; and Deborah Kerr gave good value as M’s Scottish widow.

On top of the large cast are a baffling array of cameos. William Holden and George Raft were in the UK at the time of filming, so they got written in. Raft refused to take any lines and settled for his old coin toss gimmick from his gangster movie heyday. Peter O’Toole appears for one brief nonsensical exchange with Tremble and Andress’s boyfriend, French star Jean-Paul Belmondo, was parachuted into the grand finale. Other familiar faces including  Ronnie Corbett, Bernard Cribbins, Derek Nimmo, John Le Mesurier, and Burt Kwouk also show up in the chaotic kaleidoscope of characters. Even future Darth Vader, David Prowse, crops up playing Frankenstein’s Monster.

It was a mess alright, and to delve further into the hirings, firings, and general chaos of the production would take up far more room that we have here. Suffice to say, if Casino Royale looks like absolute bedlam on screen, it was an accurate reflection of what was going on behind the scenes. As Joanna Pettet, who plays James Bond’s daughter, Mata Bond, summed it up:

“We had almost no script, and when we did have a script, usually by the time we came in the morning and finished our makeup, the script had changed.”

There are a few good things about Casino Royale, however. Burt Bacharach’s jaunty swinging sixties score is a hoot and the film looks absolutely spectacular. So much money was thrown at the lavish and impractical sets that it makes the official Bond movies of the era look pretty barebones. The poster is also a very ‘60s delight.

Casino Royale was still a box office hit despite all the extravagant expense and the general dismay of the critics. Normal service was resumed a few months after its premiere with the release of You Only Live Twice, although there was a sense that Feldman’s cunning plan at least partially succeeded. It didn’t make quite as much money as the previous entries and, suffering from spy movie fatigue, some critics complained that the formula was beginning to tire already, just five films into the franchise.

Casino Royale (2006)

George Lazenby, Sean Connery (twice again), Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan all got the chance to put their personal stamp on the world’s most famous secret agent over the next 40 years. During that time, only Lazenby’s solitary outing in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service came close to emulating the grit and complexity of Ian Fleming’s original novels.

Pierce Brosnan was initially greeted as a breath of fresh air when he first donned the tuxedo in Goldeneye, returning the franchise to the breezy and confident fun of old after the dour Timothy Dalton pictures. The optimism didn’t last long, however. Tomorrow Never Dies was beaten to the theatres by an unheralded comedy written by and starring Mike Myers. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was so successful at skewering the classic tropes that the idea of making Bond movies the old-fashioned way now seemed laughable. As a result, Brosnan’s tenure as 007 limped to a close after four films, concluding with the dreadful Die Another Day in 2002. The same year, an invigoratingly crunchy spy thriller called The Bourne Identity came out, a film so lean and suspenseful that it made Brosnan’s efforts look as outdated as Roger Moore’s.

Clearly a new approach was required, and EON decided a reboot was the way to go. The production company had finally secured the rights to Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale in 1999 and this would be the perfect place to start, introducing Bond at the start of his career as 00 agent. Only Judi Dench would reprise her role from the Brosnan films, which was a shrewd and immensely popular casting choice. Emphasising the new stripped-back approach, the movie was also very low on gadgets - Ben Whishaw, who replaced Desmond Llewellyn as Q, wouldn’t appear until Skyfall in 2012.

With the source material set for the reboot, the casting of James Bond was big news in the media. Several actors were considered for the role including Ewan McGregor, Dougray Scott, David Tennant, Rupert Friend, Sam Worthington, and Henry Cavill. Cavill was apparently the only one who was in with a serious shout, although he was ultimately dismissed due to his age - he was only 22 at the time. That left Daniel Craig, who had quietly built up his profile in movies like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Road to Perdition, Endless Love, and Layer Cake. Despite his solid credentials, his casting was controversial at the time. Both the fans and the tabloids didn’t like the idea of a relatively short blonde-haired guy playing the traditionally tall and dark secret agent.

The criticism made Craig extra determined to nail the role. In preparation, he read all Fleming’s novels and took inspiration from Mossad Agents who served as advisors on the set of Steven Spielberg’s Munich:

“Bond has just come out of the service and he's a killer… You can see it in their eyes, you know immediately: ‘oh, hello, he's a killer.’ There's a look. These guys walk into a room and very subtly they check the perimeters for an exit. That's the sort of thing I wanted.”

Goldeneye director Martin Campbell took the helm and production began in 2006, shooting in the Czech Republic, the Bahamas, Italy, and Pinewood Studios. Craig literally hit the ground running with an outstanding opening set piece that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this wasn’t your dad’s Bond. This was a far grittier hard-boiled adventure with Craig portraying 007 as a raw blunt-force instrument that was far closer to Fleming’s original creation.

Daniel Craig as James Bond

Casting Vesper Lynd was also crucial to the new direction. Both Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron were considered for the role, but it came down to Eva Green. The French actor was still a considerable beauty in her own right, but she also brought a forthrightness to the role that established her as Bond’s equal from their first scene together. It was the most satisfying romance in the series since Lazenby and Diana Rigg in OHMSS and set the tone for the rest of Craig’s run, five films where the overarching theme is Bond’s grief over Lynd’s death.

Two other key roles, CIA agent Felix Leiter and the villain of the piece, Le Chiffre, were capably rounded out by Jeffrey Wright and Mads Mikkelsen. The latter brought the acclaimed Danish actor to widespread international attention and he plays the SPECTRE agent with his now-customary chilling aplomb. From the moment we meet him, we’re in no doubt that Le Chiffre is a desperate and calculating man who poses a significant threat to Bond.

Casino Royale premiered in London in November 2008 and it was an instant smash, busting UK box office records on its way to becoming the highest-grossing entry in the James Bond series until Skyfall four years later. Any doubts about Craig’s ability to portray 007 quickly vanished as the movie dispensed with the silliness that marred much of the series. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the tone of geopolitics had changed since the relatively carefree ‘90s, and Craig established himself as the Bond for his time and place. As Barbara Broccoli put it:

“The world has changed a lot, it’s a more serious world, and we expect our heroes to fight the battles with better judgement and more responsibility, and with less frivolity.”

Casino Royale is now regarded as one of the best films in the series and relegates the outlandish 1967 version to a curious blip in James Bond lore. Ian Fleming would have no doubt approved.

So there you have it, Casino Royale’s journey from page to screen. Are you one of those rare people who actually likes the ‘60s movie? And how do you rank the Craig version among the rest of the series? Let us know!