I’m currently watching this on a preview of the EPIX channel on DISH. It stars Barry Nelson as Bond (I recognize the face, but I’ve never heard the name) and Peter fucking Lorre as Le Chifre. Why have I never heard of this? I thought I knew everything about the Bond franchise.
BTW: Bond is an American and Leiter is ‘Letter’.
Despite the early date it appears to be a Teleplay in three acts. It would be forgettable except for Peter fucking Lorre!
I heard of it thirty years ago, so if you don’t know about it, it just means that you’re not quite the James Bond expert you thought you were. It’s not made by the same people who made nearly all the other James Bond films. It was intended for American television and greatly changed from the book. The character of James Bond was little known, so the producers only had to pay $1,000 to Ian Fleming for the rights to the book:
I’ve known about it for years, and bought my VHS copy 20 years ago (which I’ve since transferred to DVD). It was big news when they found it, and had Barry Nelson attend a screening. It’s in the Bond reference books and websites.
As a friend of mine (a huge Bond fan), you could argue that this adaptation did have an effect on Bond. In the novel Casino Royale and those immediately following, Bond is ice-cold in his manner and style and utterly humorless. (Sean Connery managed to convey this when he first appears onscreen in his first Bond appearance as the first cinemsatic bond in Dr. No, where someone asks his name as he replies (while lighting his cigarette) with his now-iconib “Bond. James Bond.” As Robert Benson points out, he says this with absolutely no warmth, unlike the way he later delivered the line.
But Barry Nelson’s American “Jimmy” Bond* cracks cynical jokes. “Are you the buy who was shot?” asks the doorman at the Casino when Bond narrowly avoids assassination. “No, I’m the guy who was missed,” he neatly responds. The Climax adaptation gave Bond his first use of what were to become trademark wisecracks.
*I suspect the producers thought that American audiences would relate better to an American spy, so they changed his nationality (and accent). They also switcbhed Felix Leiter from American to British, to make up for it.
An interesting film. I have it on DVD, and watch it occasionally. James Bond as an American is a bit jarring.
It appears as a bonus on at least one DVD edition of the 1967 Casino Royale, as I saw it when I Netflixed that movie. Apparently this version is edited, which explains why the story seemed so rushed.
I believe the opening credits initiated the “Look through the barrel of a pistol” shot, used thereafter in Bond intros.
Actually, in all the Daniel Craig movies, they’ve moved the gun-barrel effect to the end of the movie.
I don’t think that was a gun barrel, or that it’s unique to this adaptation. I think this is the general opening used for the dramatic series Climax!. Like some other thibngs from the 1950s, it used relatively simple camera tricks (Ernie Kovacs’ show did something similar).
The “rifled barrel” opening looks different, and Robert Benson gives a history of it in his book on James Bond, even naming the guy responsible. But I don’t recall the details. It’s possible he was influenvced by this show, but I really have no idea.
The Wikipedia page on this* says it was Maurice Binder, designer of most of the Bond title sequences until his death, who came up with the gun-barrel logo
Funny – I could’ve sworn it was suggested by someone else.
Yup, it was a gun barrel, just watched it on Epix a couple nights ago. Of course it wasn’t shot through a real barrel, but the tube with rifling was emulated in full 50s semi-effective special effects, probably a matte painting. You can argue it’s some vague circular graphic, but it’s a gun barrel, clear as day.
Like I said, it’s not filmed through a barrel, it’s an artist’s rendering of one. I don’t expect the rifling to appear accurate, since hardly any movie viewer will have ever bore-scoped a pistol barrel. That image is what I’d consider to be a recognizable popular concept of what a pistol barrel looks like from the breach. Until someone comes up with a cite from the art or effects department of the studio which produced the movie, I remain unconvinced.
If the studio had produced non-crime, non-spy type movie credits with an identical “view through a tube” graphic, prior to this, that might go a long way as evidence contrary to my observation. I see a gun barrel.