Bond Revisited

Casino Royale (1967)
Not an Official Bond

Sir James Bond (David Niven) is enjoying his retirement when four international agents press him into service again in hopes of smashing SMERSH and Topple LeChiffre (Orsen Welles) at the baccarat tables. Bond is taken in by Agent Mimi (alias Lady Fiona McTarry) [Deborah Kerr] who immediately falls in love with him. Bond's illegitimate daughter, Mata Bond, whose mother was the late Mata Hari, is going to help out. The current agent using the Bond name, Cooper (Terrance Cooper), has his hands full, despite his assistance by beautiful secretary, Moneypenny. 007's nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen!) is supposedly incompetent. Bond, hoping to clear his name from its current low repute, hires Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to meet LeChiffre at the gambling tables at Casino Royale. The world's richest agent, Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress), helps convince Tremble to masquerade as 007. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Peter Sellers and Orson Welles hated each other so much that the filming of the scene where both of them face each other across a gaming table actually took place on different days with a double standing in for one the actors. Orson Welles reportedly insisted on including magic tricks into his scenes, a possible source of the friction between him and Peter Sellers. Peter Sellers often caused interruptions by leaving the set for days at a time.

In 1954, CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 for the rights to adapt Casino Royale into a one hour television adventure as part of their Climax! series. The episode featured American Barry Nelson in the role of "Jimmy Bond", an agent for the fictional "Combined Intelligence" agency. The rights to Casino Royale were subsequently sold to producer Charles K. Feldman who turned Fleming's first novel into a spoof featuring actor David Niven as one of six James Bonds. The instrumental theme music was a hit for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. As a result, it was the only one not sold to Eon Productions. When plans began to adapt the novel as a motion picture, the original thought was to do a straight film of the novel. But with the success of Sean Connery's Bond, it was decided the only way a rival Bond film could survive would be as a parody. The Peter Sellers sequence is the only part of Ian Fleming's novel to make it into the film. The confrontation with Le Chiffre in the casino, the plan to discredit Le Chiffre with SMERSH and the villain's execution by enemy agents are all in the novel. So is the notion of Bond writing a book on baccarat, and the element of Vesper being an enemy spy. Reportedly, Eon Productions has been trying to buy back the rights to Casino Royale for years, in hopes of someday making a serious Bond film out of the novel. Despite being regarded as a "flop" financially in the press, the film actually did quite well in financial terms. Despite its very high production budget and additional costs in marketing and advertising, it still managed to make a net profit of well over $5 million for the studio. The film was generally reported as a failure financially in the press because it was outperformed at the box office by the official Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967), which was released in the same year, and because of the film's high costs. But in actuality the studio still made a large profit off the film and although it didn't match You Only Live Twice at the box office it still managed to do quite well. Casino Royale was the 3rd highest grossing film for the year behind only The Jungle Book (1967) and You Only Live Twice.

The Characters:

• James Bond: There are seven Bonds in this movie including: David Niven (Sir James Bond) the original, {when he becomes M he orders that all agents be named James Bond to confuse the enemies}, Terence Cooper (named Coop) the successor, Woody Allen (Bond's nephew Jimmy Bond), Joanna Pettet (Mata Bond, illegitimate daughter of Mata Hari and James Bond), and Peter Sellers (card-sharp Evelyn Tremble impersonating Bond at Casino Royale).
• Le Chiffre: Orsen Welles, the card shark with the card tricks
• Vesper Lynd: Ursula Andress, who previously appeared as Bond Girl Honey Rider in Dr. No.

Since this is a parody, it is hard to review the same as I would a regular serious Bond film. It was funny, yes, but it was a little hard to follow due to the plethora of 007s. The film was actually seperated into 7 chapters and actually seemed to have one or two chapters out of order. and actually ends in a cliched brawl (just like Blazing Saddles would seven years later, except that Blazing Saddles was better). It was good and fun.

Next Up: Bond 5 You Only Live Twice, Casino Royale's 1967 competition.