Manufactured on demand BD-R blu-ray, plays in most blu-ray players. UNCUT, includes original ending. Casino Royale 1954 BD-R Blu-ray Disc RARE Barry Nelson Manufactured On Demand eBay. Casino Royale (1954): Released one year after Ian Fleming's first Bond novel it was a black and white, one hour CBS TV production starring Berry Nelson. Casino Royale (1967): Described as an 'incoherent all-star comedy' with David Niven as 007 and a cast that included Peter Sellers, Ursala Andress, Orson Welles, and Woody Allen. The source James Bond novel 'Casino Royale' is mentioned. Casino Royale (1967) In the German spy school, Polo mentions some of the former students, among them Peter Lorre who played Le Chiffre in another movie based on the same novel. Casino Royale was released a third time on Blu-ray in 2012 with DTS audio and deleted scenes, but with fewer special features than the 2008 edition. It was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on 25 February 2020. Cuts and censorship. Casino Royale was censored for its release in Britain, the United States, Germany and China.

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'Casino Royale'
Climax! episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 3
Directed by	William H. Brown, Jr.
Written by	Antony Ellis Charles Bennett
Story by	Ian Fleming (novel)
Presented by	William Lundigan
Produced by	Bretaigne Windust
Featured music	Leith Stevens Jerry Goldsmith
Original air date	October 21, 1954[1]
Running time	50 minutes
Guest appearance(s)
Barry Nelson as James Bond Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre Linda Christian as Valerie Mathis Michael Pate as Clarence Leiter
Episode chronology
← Previous 'The Thirteenth Chair' Next → 'Sorry, Wrong Number'
List of Climax! episodes

'Casino Royale' is a live 1954 television adaptation of the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. An episode of the American dramatic anthology series Climax!, the show was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, and stars Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, and Linda Christian. Though this marks the first onscreen appearance of the secret agent, Nelson's Bond is played as an American spy working for the 'Combined Intelligence Agency', and is referred to as 'Jimmy' by several characters.

Most of the largely forgotten show was located in the 1980s by film historian Jim Schoenberger, with the ending (including credits) found afterward. Both copies are black and white kinescopes, but the original live broadcast was in color. The rights to the program were acquired by MGM at the same time as the rights for the 1967 film version of Casino Royale, clearing the legal pathway and enabling it to make the 2006 film of the same name.

Plot[edit]

Act I 'Combined Intelligence' agent James Bond comes under fire from an assassin: he manages to dodge the bullets and enters Casino Royale. There he meets his British contact, Clarence Leiter, who remembers 'Card Sense Jimmy Bond' from when he played the Maharajah at Deauville. While Bond explains the rules of baccarat, Leiter explains Bond's mission: to defeat Le Chiffre at baccarat and force his Soviet spymasters to 'retire' him. Bond then encounters a former lover, Valerie Mathis, who is Le Chiffre's current girlfriend; he also meets Le Chiffre himself.

Act II Bond beats Le Chiffre at baccarat, but, when he returns to his hotel room, is confronted by Le Chiffre and his bodyguards, along with Mathis, who Le Chiffre has discovered is an agent of the Deuxième Bureau, France's external military intelligence agency at the time.

Act III Le Chiffre tortures Bond in order to find out where Bond has hidden the check for his winnings, but Bond does not reveal where it is. After a fight between Bond and Le Chiffre's guards, Bond shoots and wounds Le Chiffre, saving Valerie in the process. Exhausted, Bond sits in a chair opposite Le Chiffre to talk. Mathis gets in between them, and Le Chiffre grabs her from behind, threatening her with a concealed razor blade. As Le Chiffre moves towards the door with Mathis as a shield, she struggles, breaking free slightly, and Bond is able to shoot Le Chiffre.

Cast[edit]

• Barry Nelson as James Bond
• Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre
• Linda Christian as Valerie Mathis (a composite character of Vesper Lynd and René Mathis)
• William Lundigan as Host/Himself
• Michael Pate as Clarence Leiter
• Eugene Borden as Chef De Partie
• Jean Del Val as Croupier
• Gene Roth as Basil
• Kurt Katch as Zoltan
• Juergen Tarrach as Schultz
• Herman Belmonte as Doorman

Production[edit]

In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000^[2] ($9,520 in 2019 dollars)^[3] to adapt his first novel, Casino Royale, into a one-hour television adventure^[4] as part of their dramatic anthology series Climax!, which ran between October 1954 and June 1958.^[5] It was adapted for the screen by Antony Ellis and Charles Bennett; Bennett was best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, including The 39 Steps and Sabotage.^[6] Due to the restriction of a one-hour play, the adapted version lost many of the details found in the book, although it retained its violence, particularly in Act III.^[6]

The hour-long Casino Royale episode aired on October 21, 1954 as a live production and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent James Bond, with Peter Lorre in the role of Le Chiffre,^[7] and was hosted by William Lundigan.^[8] The Bond character from Casino Royale was re-cast as an American agent, described as working for 'Combined Intelligence', supported by the British agent, Clarence Leiter; 'thus was the Anglo-American relationship depicted in the book reversed for American consumption'.^[9]

Clarence Leiter was an agent for Station S, while being a combination of Felix Leiter and René Mathis. The name 'Mathis', and his association with the Deuxième Bureau, was given to the leading lady, who is named Valérie Mathis, instead of Vesper Lynd.^[10] Reports that toward the end of the broadcast 'the coast-to-coast audience saw Peter Lorre, the actor playing Le Chiffre, get up off the floor after his 'death' and begin to walk to his dressing room',^[11] do not appear to be accurate.^[12]

Legacy[edit]

Four years after the production of Casino Royale, CBS invited Fleming to write 32 episodes over a two-year period for a television show based on the James Bond character.^[4] 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.^[13]

This was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel and was made before the formation of Eon Productions. When MGM eventually obtained the rights to the 1967 film version of Casino Royale, it also received the rights to this television episode.^[14]

The Casino Royale episode was lost for decades after its 1954 broadcast until a black and white kinescope of the live broadcast was located by film historian Jim Schoenberger in 1981.^[15][16] The episode aired on TBS as part of a Bond film marathon. The original 1954 broadcast had been in color, and the VHS release and TBS presentation did not include the last two minutes, which were at that point still lost. Eventually, the missing footage (minus the last seconds of the end credits) was found and included on a Spy Guise & Cara Entertainment VHS release. MGM subsequently included the incomplete version on its first DVD release of the 1967 film Casino Royale.^[1]

David Cornelius of Efilmcritic.com remarked that 'the first act freely gives in to spy pulp cliché' and noted that he believed Nelson was miscast and 'trips over his lines and lacks the elegance needed for the role.' He described Lorre as 'the real main attraction here, the veteran villain working at full weasel mode; a grotesque weasel whose very presence makes you uncomfortable.'^[6] Peter Debruge of Variety also praised Lorre, considering him the source of 'whatever charm this slipshod antecedent to the Bond oeuvre has to offer', and complaining that 'the whole thing seems to have been done on the cheap'. Debruge still noted that while the special had very few elements in common with the Eon series, Nelson's portrayal of 'Bond suggests a realistically human vulnerability that wouldn't resurface until Eon finally remade Casino Royale more than half a century later.'^[17]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abBritton 2004, p. 30.
2. ^Black 2005, p. 14.
3. ^Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. 'Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–'. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
4. ^ ^abLindner 2009, p. 14.
5. ^Lycett 1996, p. 264.
6. ^ ^abc'Now Pay Attention, 007: Introduction and Casino Royale '54'. Efilmcritic.com. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
7. ^Benson 1988, p. 11.
8. ^Andreychuk 2010, p. 38.
9. ^Black, Jeremy (Winter 2002–2003). 'Oh, James'. National Interest (70): 106. ISSN0884-9382.
10. ^Benson 1988, p. 7.
11. ^Lycett 1996, p. 265.
12. ^Mikkelson, David (April 13, 2014). 'Dead Character Walks Off Stage'. Snopes Media Group Inc. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
13. ^Pearson 1967, p. 312.
14. ^Poliakoff, Keith (2000). 'License to Copyright - The Ongoing Dispute Over the Ownership of James Bond'(PDF). Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal. Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. 18: 387–436. Archived from the original(PDF) on March 31, 2012. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
15. ^Benson 1988, p. 10.
16. ^Rubin 2002, p. 70.
17. ^Debruge, Peter (May 11, 2012). 'Revisiting 'Casino Royale''. Variety. Retrieved May 20, 2012.

Bibliography[edit]

• Andreychuk, Ed (2010). Louis L'Amour on Film and Television. McFarland. ISBN978-0-7864-3336-0.
• Balio, Tino (1987). United Artists: the company that changed the film industry. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN978-0-299-11440-4.
• Barnes, Alan; Hearn, Marcus (2001). Kiss Kiss Bang! Bang!: the Unofficial James Bond Film Companion. Batsford Books. ISBN978-0-7134-8182-2.
• Benson, Raymond (1988). The James Bond Bedside Companion. London: Boxtree Ltd. ISBN978-0-88365-705-8.
• Black, Jeremy (2005). The Politics of James Bond: from Fleming's Novel to the Big Screen. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN978-0-8032-6240-9.
• Britton, Wesley Alan (2004). Spy television (2 ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN978-0-275-98163-1.
• Chapman, James (1999). Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. London/New York City: I.B. Tauris. ISBN978-1-84511-515-9.
• Cork, John; Scivally, Bruce (2006). James Bond: The Legacy 007. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN978-0-8109-8252-9.
• Lindner, Christoph (2009). The James Bond Phenomenon: a Critical Reader (2 ed.). Manchester University Press. ISBN978-0-7190-8095-1.
• Lycett, Andrew (1996). Ian Fleming. London: Phoenix. ISBN978-1-85799-783-5.
• Macintyre, Ben (2008). For Yours Eyes Only. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN978-0-7475-9527-4.
• Pearson, John (1967). The Life of Ian Fleming: Creator of James Bond. London: Jonathan Cape.
• Pfeiffer, Lee; Worrall, Dave (1998). The Essential Bond. London: Boxtree Ltd. ISBN978-0-7522-2477-0.
• Rubin, Steven Jay (2002). The James Bond films: a behind the scenes history. Westport, Conn: Arlington House. ISBN978-0-87000-523-7.

External links[edit]

• Casino Royale (1954) on IMDb
• Casino Royale 1954 Trailer on YouTube

Bond is back. And he's blonde. What's that, you say, a blonde Bond? Is that Kosher? Well, I'm hear to tell you, Daniel Craig is Bond - the franchise is back, baby, and it's better than ever.

Casino Royale 1954 Blu Ray Blu Ray

As a young man, I remember thinking that no one could possibly be a better Bond than Roger Moore. He was my first Bond, and first impressions die hard. Hell, I even picked what college to attend because of a line by Holly Goodhead in 'Moonraker.' After the lady astronaut kicked several bad guy's asses, Bond asks 'Where'd you learn to fight like that, NASA?' Her response, 'No... Vassar.' But I digress...
Over time, I realized that Sean Connery - the 'original' 007 - also made a damn fine Bond, better in some ways than Roger Moore: more dangerous, though perhaps less debonair. When the rumours surfaced that Pierce Brosnan was being considered for the role, I thought, 'Now there's a great Bond.' But contract obligations got in the way, and by the time Brosnan finally took the role, the anticipation outweighed the reality. Mr. Brosnan provided little that was new and fresh to a franchise that desperately needed more. I lost interest, along with others. Bond became less relevant. Then along came Daniel Craig.
The Film
Although the newest Bond story has been made into a film once before (not to mention a forgettable 1954 TV movie), the earlier 'Casino Royale' (featuring Peter Sellers, David Niven, Ursula Andress and Woody Allen all as James Bond/007) was little more than light-hearted tongue-in-cheek farce. This time around, Bond is serious - deadly serious - and his trademark womanizing is called out for exactly what it is by a new generation of Bond girl (Eva Green's 'Vesper Lynd'). But (of course) this doesn't stop her from falling for him.
Despite the film's modern day setting, with the inimitable Dame Judi Dench reprising her role as MI6 Chief 'M,' this story is meant to show the beginnings of Agent 007, a fresh-faced (but hardly innocent) James Bond who doesn't even have a preference for Martini preparation:
Bartender: 'Shaken or stirred?'
Bond:

Casino Royale 1954 Blu Ray Dvd Players

'Do I look like I give a damn?'
From its opening chase sequence in Madagascar (mostly on foot, but more exciting than most vehicular chases), through airports, lavish casinos, decrepit torture chambers and all the way to its intense shoot-em-up finale in Venice, 'Casino Royale' grips you in its maw, chews you up and spits you out wanting more. Please Sir. More Bond.
For more details on the film, check out cinema snob David Kempler's Casino Royale review.
The Picture
Early Blu-Ray Disc titles were limited by their storage (25 GB on a single-layer Blu-Ray Disc) and outdated MPEG-2 video codec. Only 3 times the storage of a dual layer DVD, yet expected to hold 6 times the picture detail using the same compression codec? Do the math - it just doesn't add up. Happily, 'Casino Royale' comes to us on a dual-layer Blu-Ray Disc (50 GB) using the more efficient MPEG-4 AVC format. The resulting 1920x1080 pixel Full HD picture provides jaw-dropping detail and excellent color saturation.
In the perilous girder-jumping opening chase sequence, I found myself distracted by the subtle variations of blue and green and rolling waves of the Caribbean sea in the background. Brightly lit shots in the Madagascar market or on the open water offered good perceived image depth and striking detail reproduction. Night scenes and lightless interiors were appropriately dark without losing detail, something that's nearly impossible to capture on a standard DVD.
The film is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 so you'll get black bars at the top and bottom of your HDTV screen, unless you watch the film on an anamorphic front projector with Cinemascope aspect screen.
The Sound
Like many early Blu-Ray titles, 'Casino Royale' features an uncompressed 5.1-channel PCM soundtrack. This uses more storage space than the more efficient DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD lossless compression codecs, but captures excellent detail and dynamic range nonetheless, and provides compatibility with a wide selection of current generation HDMI-switching receivers and preamp/processors. The disc also includes 'legacy' Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks (English, French and Spanish), for compatibility with even the most mundane home theater gear.
As is typical of the Bond franchise, there are explosions and gunshots galore, with dramatic theme music thrown in for good measure. But at a running time of over 2 hours, 20 minutes, this Bond also relies heavily on spoken dialog. The uncompressed PCM soundtrack does an excellent job reproducing all of the textures and dynamics of the film, from whispered pillow talk to gunshots to collapsing, exploding buildings. 'Casino Royale' is a reference disc not only for picture quality, but for audio quality as well.
The Extras
The extras included on the disc are fairly interesting, if limited. I enjoyed the 'Bond Girls Are Forever' retrospective which documents the evolution of the Bond girls, both the femmes fatales and the ill-fated love interests, from Ursula Andress (Dr. No) and Honor Blackman (Goldfinger) up until more recent Bond babes, Halle Berry and Samantha Bond (both of 'Die Another Day'), and yes, even Dame Judi Dench. Original footage of the ladies in action is interspersed with modern interviews conducted by the host and co-writer Maryam D'Abo, a Bond girl herself ('The Living Daylights'). Defying the expected descension into pure fluff, the documentary does a nice job capturing what it means to be a Bond girl, both the good and the bad.
Some of the other extras also add depth to the film-making. 'James Bond: For Real' shows just how dangerous and true-to-life many of the stunts were, including the stunning opening chase sequence which features real-life freerunner Sebastien Foucan. All in all, the extras are fairly limited, but if that allowed them to dedicate more bits to the video and audio quality, then I'm OK with that.
Final Thoughts
In terms of the Blu-Ray disc itself, 'Casino Royale' offers a stunning treat of visual and audio performance which enhances the enjoyment of the film in the home. In fact, considering the state of many multi-plex cinemas today, the Blu-Ray disc may offer a cinematic experience superior to that available in your local theater.
As for the film, 'Casino Royale' marks a return to form for Mr. Bond and gets me excited about what will come next. Unfortunately Mr. Fleming has long since passed away, so they'll need to either start recycling old stories or tapping new authors to move the Bond story forward. Either represents a significant challenge. But considering how well they've adapted this early story to a modern setting, and how well-suited Daniel Craig is to the role, I'm optimistic about 007's prospects. Let's hope this 'double-0' has a longer than average life expectancy.
Technical/Release Details

• Director: Martin Campbell


• Based on a novel by Ian Fleming
• Actors: Daniel Craig, Jesper Christensen, Isaach de Bankolé, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright
• Blu-Ray Disc release date: March 13, 2007
• MSRP: $38.96
• US Theatrical Release Date: November 17, 2006
• Feature film running time: 144 minutes
• Feature film video transfer: 1080p 16:9 HD transfer
• Aspect Ratio: Widescreen, 2.40:1
• Sound format: 5.1-channel Uncompressed PCM (English), Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, French, Spanish)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Thai
• Number of discs: 1
• MPAA Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Columbia Pictures
• Extras:
  • 'Becoming Bond'
  • 'James Bond: For Real'
  • 'Bond Girls are Forever'
  • Chris Cornell Music Video

Overall
Video
Audio
Movie
Extras