Valerie Mathis ( Linda Christian) is introduced as Bond’s former lover, and it is quickly clear that we are in a world of sophistication, danger and intrigue that feels quite ‘ Bondian’.įig. Bond is to humiliate the enemy agent Le Chiffre by defeating him in a baccarat game. Bond ( Barry Nelson) is an American spy called Jimmy Bond, we discover, who is greeted by his British associate Clarence (not Felix) Leiter (Michael Bate). The next shot established the setting of a casino, which had been built in the studio of course. The opening titles used each week had an emphatic male voice-over that told the viewer that this programme is ‘Live, from Television City in Hollywood!’ Then the series host, actor William Lundigan, addressed the audience from a study desk, and for Casino Royale he held a baccarat shoe, telling us that the week’s story is ‘based on the bestseller by Ian Fleming’. Each drama was bracketed by the sponsor’s advertising, a short film showing Chrysler’s current cars. The Climax! series was a drama anthology each episode was a different story, but screened under the same overall title and the episodes were planned as a single season. YouTube now hosts poor quality monochrome uploads of the broadcast. It was broadcast in colour, but in that first year of colour TV in the USA very few people would have seen it that way, viewing in black and white instead. The one-hour television Casino Royale was screened at 8.30 pm on 21 October 1954 in the series Climax! Mystery Theatre (CBS 1954-8) sponsored by the Chrysler Corporation. The output of the three or four cameras was mixed live in the studio gallery, since videotape for recorded programme making became available only from 1956.

The main production method for TV drama in the USA in the 1950s was to shoot a continuous performance live in a multi-camera television studio, using electronic cameras. So, it was possible for Curtis Brown to make the television deal with CBS without a direct impact on possible sales of the film rights. Live television rights are separate from cinematographic rights, which apply to a pre-recorded adaptation such as a cinema film or filmed television programme. Fleming’s American agent Curtis Brown negotiated a deal for CBS to pay $1,000 for an option on the live television rights to Casino Royale, which had been published in 1953.

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