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Casino Royale is the first James Bond novel by author Ian Fleming. It would eventually pave the way for 11 other novels by Fleming himself in addition to 2 short story anthologies, followed by many additional Bond novels by other authors. Since being published in 1953 by Jonathan Cape, Casino Royale has been adapted for the screen three times; a 1954 CBS television episode of Climax!, a 1967 film spoof of the same name, and the twenty-first official film in the EON Productions Bond franchise scheduled for release on November 17th 2006. Once the new film is completed, Casino Royale will become the only Ian Fleming work to be adapted on more than two occasions.

The novel

Casino Royale was first released on April 13, 1953 in a United Kingdom hardcover edition by publishers Jonathan Cape. The first paperback edition of Casino Royale in the United States was retitled by publisher American Popular Library in 1955 (this followed a hardcover edition with the original title). Fleming's suggestions for a new title, The Double-O Agent and The Deadly Gamble, were disregarded in favor of You Asked For It. The novel was subtitled "Royale" and made reference to secret agent 007 as "Jimmy Bond" on the back cover. In 1960 the original title Casino Royale replaced You Asked For It for all further paperback editions in the United States.

When the book came to the UK in paperback form in 1955, readers were given their first glimpse of an image of secret agent James Bond on the book jacket. The image of Bond was based on a photograph of American actor Richard Conte, who would become known for roles in films such as Ocean's Eleven (1960) and The Godfather (1972).

Plot summary

Monsieur Le Chiffre, "the cipher", is an agent for the Soviet assassination bureau SMERSH, running a baccarat game at a French casino to raise needed operational funds—namely, to recover SMERSH's money that he lost in a failed attempt to establish a chain of brothels.

Expert baccarat player James Bond (British secret agent 007), is assigned the job of beating Le Chiffre, in the hope that the agent's gambling debts will provoke SMERSH into killing him. After hours of intensive play, Bond manages to beat Le Chiffre, but only with extra money provided by Felix Leiter of the CIA, who is in attendance as a covert observer.

Bond has been provided with an assistant, the beautiful but emotionally turbulent Vesper Lynd, who becomes his lover. But she is holding a terrible secret — she is actually a Russian double agent, under orders to see that Bond does not escape Le Chiffre. With her unwilling connivance, Bond is captured and tortured by Le Chiffre, but Le Chiffre is assassinated by SMERSH. After Bond's recovery, during which he expresses an intention to resign from the Service, he spends his convalescence with Vesper Lynd, but becomes suspicious of her. Vesper commits suicide and her body is discovered by Bond, who reports to his superiors, tersely: "The bitch is dead now."

Story inspirations

Ian Fleming claimed that Casino Royale was inspired by certain incidents that took place during his career at the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. The first, and the basis for the novel, was a trip to Lisbon that Fleming and the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, took during World War II en route to the United States. While there they went to the Estoril Casino in Estoril, which, due to the neutral status of Portugal had a number of spies of warring regimes present. Fleming claimed that while there he was cleaned out by a "chief German agent" at a table playing Chemin de Fer, however, Admiral Godfrey tells a different story, that Fleming only played Portuguese businessmen and that afterwards Fleming had fantasized about them being German agents and the excitement of cleaning them out.

The failed assassination attempt on Bond while at Royale-les-Eaux is also claimed by Fleming to be inspired by a real event. The inspiration comes from a failed assassination on Franz von Papen who was a Vice-Chancellor and Ambassador under Adolf Hitler. Both von Papen and Bond survive their assassination attempts, carried out by Bulgarians, due to a tree that protected them both from a bomb blast.

Trivia

  • Jonathan Cape, the publishers of the first British edition, would publish the first hardcover editions of every Bond novel (with the exception of novelisations) until No Deals, Mr. Bond in 1987.
  • The physical characteristics of Le Chiffre are based on the English occultist, Aleister Crowley. Crowley's interest in sadomasochistic pornography is said to have also influenced a scene in the novel in which Le Chiffre violently tortures Bond with a carpet-beater.
  • After a run at the roulette table, Bond meets Felix Leiter for the first time. After introducing himself with the popular line "Bond – James Bond," the two go to the bar where Bond orders his famous "dry martini" (see shaken, not stirred).

Comic strip adaptation

Casino Royale was the first James Bond novel to be adapted as a daily comic strip which was published in the British Daily Express newspaper, and syndicated worldwide. It ran from July 7 to December 13, 1958, and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky; the strip was reprinted by Titan Books in the early 1990s and again in 2005; the 2005 collection, titled Casino Royale, also includes the comic strip adaptations of Live and Let Die and Moonraker.

To aid the Daily Express in illustrating James Bond, Ian Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of what he believed James Bond to look like. John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too "outdated" and "pre-war" and thus changed Bond to give him a more masculine look.

Adaptation history

The 1954 television episode

In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt Casino Royale into a one hour television adventure as part of their Climax! series. Additionally, CBS in the late 50's made an offer to Fleming to write 32 episodes over a two year period for a television show based on the James Bond character. Fleming agreed and began to write outlines for this series. When nothing ever came of this, however, Fleming grouped and adapted three of the outlines into short stories and released the 1960 anthology For Your Eyes Only along with an additional two new short stories.

The episode, Casino Royale, aired on October 21, 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as American secret agent "Card Sense" Jimmy Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. For this Americanised version of the story, Bond is an agent for "Combined Intelligence," while the character Felix Leiter from the original novel became "Clarence Leiter," a British agent, and a combination of Leiter and Rene Mathis. The name "Mathis" was given to the leading lady, who is named Valerie Mathis (instead of Vesper Lynd).

This was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, and was made before EON acquired the Bond film rights. When MGM eventually obtained the rights to the 1967 film version of Casino Royale, it also received the rights to this television episode. Some sources have suggested that this was intended as a pilot for a potential Bond TV series starring Nelson.

Two versions of the episodes currently exist; a three-act version and a four-act version. The three-act version was added as a bonus feature to the DVD for the 1967 spoof. A proposed DVD release of the full four-act version has been indefinitely delayed.

There is an urban legend that Peter Lorre, killed in Act 3, stood up and walked off camera during the broadcast. In fact, this actually occurred during an earlier episode of Climax!, during an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye; the event was widely covered in the media of the day.

Cast and characters

The 1967 spoof

In 1955 Ian Fleming sold the film rights of Casino Royale to producers Michael Garrison (later creator of The Wild Wild West) and Gregory Ratoff for $6,000. Ratoff eventually tried to sell the idea of a James Bond series to 20th Century Fox but was turned down. In conjunction with Michael Garrison, Ratoff's widow sold the film rights to producer Charles K. Feldman after Ratoff's death. With the success of the official James Bond film series in the early 1960s, Feldman went to producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman with a proposition to produce a serious film version starring Sean Connery as agent 007, but was turned down. Coming off the success of the comedy What’s New, Pussycat?, Feldman decided the best way to profit from the film rights was to make a spoof. Feldman's spoof was produced and released in 1967 by Columbia Pictures. The spoof pre-dated the ouevre of Mike Myers/Austin Powers. Burt Bacharach wrote and arranged the soundtrack, which had appearances by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and Dusty Springfield.

The unproduced Raymond Benson stage play

In 1985, Raymond Benson adapted Fleming's novel into a stage play, although the play was never produced. The play was submitted to a British agent who recommended that it not be produced. In an interview Benson stated,
"She was very elderly and in my opinion she just didn't get it. She recommended that the play not be produced. After further thought, Glidrose shelved it with the ultimate decision that a James Bond stage play simply wouldn't work. The films had Bond in a monopoly and there was no way a play could compete. I disagreed, but it was their property." — Raymond Benson

In 1996, Benson went on to become the third continuation author of the James Bond novels (not counting John Pearson who did not write original novels in the oeuvre). In total, Benson wrote six novels, three novelisations, and three short stories before retiring from the job in 2002.

The 2006 film

In the 1990s, Sony Pictures Entertainment (which had incorporated Columbia Pictures) decided to make a serious adaptation of Casino Royale and had also announced plans to produce its own rival Bond series, but these plans, in addition to Kevin McClory's plans for a second remake of Thunderball (the first being Never Say Never Again) were laid to rest when Sony settled a legal action with MGM in 1999 giving up any rights to the James Bond character. Included in the settlement Sony traded the rights to Casino Royale for MGM's partial-rights to Spider-Man. The distribution rights to Never Say Never Again were previously acquired by MGM from Warner Bros in 1997, although the film rights to Thunderball are still owned by Kevin McClory.

After MGM's acquisition of the film rights to Casino Royale there was speculation that an official version would be produced. Ironically, in 2004 a Sony/Comcast consortium acquired the Bond film series rights co-owner United Artists. Soon after, in 2005 it was announced by EON Productions that their next James Bond adventure would in fact be Casino Royale, to be released worldwide on November 17, 2006 and directed by GoldenEye director Martin Campbell.

On October 14, 2005 during a news conference by EON Productions and Sony Pictures Entertainment it was announced that English actor Daniel Craig would play James Bond. Taking over from Pierce Brosnan, this will be Craig's first appearance as the British secret agent. He is supported in the film by Eva Green as Vesper Lynd and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre. Judi Dench will also return for her fifth Bond film as Bond's superior, M.

Trivia

  • According to the biography Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, by Todd McCarthy, the director of His Girl Friday considered filming a version of Casino Royale in 1962, possibly starring Cary Grant as James Bond, but, ultimately, chose not to. There is a webpage that speculates on what a Howard Hawks Bond film might have been like.

References

External links

James Bond books | 1953 novels | Television programs based on books | British novels | Casino Royale | Casino Royale (Roman) | Casino Royale | 007 カジノ・ロワイヤル | Casino Royale | Casino Royale | Casino Royale (bok)

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Casino Royale".

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