Maybe Feldman wanted to take the franchise in the direction of comedic buffoonery that wouldn’t be reached until Roger Moore took over the Walther PPK and martini guzzling. Eon had started churning out the “official” Bonds and would, I’m guessing, have liked to have had control over the complete panoply of Fleming’s output following his death in 1964. Charles K Feldman seemed to be saying “it’s mine and I’ll do what I want with it”. The first film version seems to me to have more than a hint of “dog in the manger” about it.

1954 – Casino Royale (Climax!) In The Red Corner… Somehow, everything else Bond related went to Eon Productions they didn’t get them until 1999 when a swap was made to get Spider-Man for Sony.

But then the convoluted story of bringing Casino Royale to the screen began with Ian Fleming selling the film rights to Gregory Ratoff for $6,000 which, following Ratoff’s death, was sold on to Charles K Feldman. From Russia With Love as a cartoon strip!Īpart from a newspaper cartoon that was the only version of the story, in fact, of any of Fleming’s stories that was adapted for years. This starred Barry Nelson as Jimmy “Card Sense” Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. However…somebody, somewhere saw that there was a story to be told and CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.

Within a year of publication only 4,000 copies had sold across the whole of the States. The first editions hard and paper back versions. April 1955 saw Pan Books releasing the paperback version and selling 41,000 in the first year. A second print run later that month also sold out as did a third run of more than 8,000 books published in May 1954. All 4,728 copies sold out within a month.

Perhaps it was the zeitgeist at the time that led to the surge of interest in espionage fiction but Casino Royale was an instant success… in the UK at least. Download the RunPee app for free: Read more about the RunPee app.

Casino royale poster 1967