Producers Michael Garrison and Gregory Ratoff bought the film rights to Casino Royale – the first James Bond novel – for $600, in 1954. (Garrison's other claim to fame is that he produced the television series The Wild Wild West – broadcast in America from 1965 to 1969; if it ever came across the Atlantic, it passed me by. Ratoff is best known, according to Wikipedia, for his acting role as a film producer in the 1950 Bette Davis film All About Eve.)
Gregory Ratoff died in 1960; Michael Garrison then sold his share of the property, and in 1965 Ratoff's widow was able to sell the rights to producer Charles K. Feldman for $75,000. (Feldman's other productions include A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and What's New, Pussycat? (1965).
In the meantime, Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli's Eon Productions had 'optioned' the remaining Bond novels. Their first Bond film, Dr. No, came out in 1962, and was followed by From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965). They offered Feldman half a million dollars for the rights to Casino Royale, but Feldman declined. He made a deal with Columbia Pictures, whose terms included the casting of the Northern Irish actor Terence Cooper in what was to be one of several principal roles – although Feldman was reported to want Sean Connery.
The result was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a dog's dinner. The plot involves Sir James Bond (played by David Niven) being begged to come out of retirement to deal with the growing threat posed by SMERSH. He refuses, but having somehow become head of MI6, he discovers that British agents around the world have been eliminated by enemy spies because of their inability to resist sex. In order to confuse SMERSH, he orders that all MI6 agents should be known as 'James Bond 007'. (One of these, otherwise known as Coop, is played by Terence Cooper.)
The film was produced in five 'segments', all with different writers and directors. A baccarat expert, Evelyn Tremble (played by Peter Sellers) is engaged to beat the SMERSH agent Le Chiffre at baccarat. This brings us to Casino Royale, which is discovered to be built over a giant underground headquarters run by the evil Dr. Noah – who turns out to be Sir James's embittered nephew, Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen). Jimmy has defected to SMERSH to spite his famous uncle, and is attempting to use biological warfare to make all women beautiful and kill all men over 4' 6" tall – which would leave him as the "big man" who gets all the girls. Eventually, a female British agent known as The Detainer (Israeli actress Daliah Lavi) tricks Jimmy into swallowing one of his own atomic time pills, turning him into a walking atomic bomb. When he eventually explodes, Casino Royale and everyone inside are destroyed. The final scenes show Sir James and all the other agents in heaven, while Jimmy descends into hell.
You can read more about the production, should you wish to, on the website of the American Film Institute (AFI).
© Haydn Thompson 2020