Trivia / Casino Royale (1954)

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Barry Nelson has said that his main impetus for taking the role was the opportunity to work with Peter Lorre. Nelson had been a fan of the actor's great body of work and believed that if he didn't take this opportunity to work with him here it may not present itself again.
• Creator Backlash: In an interview with Starlog Magazine in October 1983, Barry Nelson said:
  So they went through and cut three words here, a line there, a half-a-word here, and their script ended up looking like a bad case of Tic-Tac-Toe. I tell you it was so frightening that when I entered my only thought was, 'Oh, God, if I can only get out of this mother!'. I was very dissatisfied with the part, I thought they wrote it poorly. No charm or character or anything.
• Deleted Scene: The extremely hard-to-find real ending involved Le Chiffre grabbing the razor and holding Vesper hostage, followed by Bond shooting the former then making out with Vesper. That scene was not on the copy that was discovered in 1981 (see below); another kinescope with the full ending has since been found, but only one VHS release has used that print so far.
• Disowned Adaptation: Ian Fleming was disappointed by the film, mainly because of how it Americanized 007.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: It was lost for decades until it resurfaced in 1981 when film collector and airlines executive Jim Shoenberger discovered a 16mm kinescope print of it amongst some old cans of film. The copies were labeled "Casino Royale" and he thought they were Casino Royale (1967). When he realized they were black-and-white prints, he played the reels out of curiosity as the 1967 spoof was a color movie. The 1954 telemovie was thence rediscovered and it was screened in a theater, shown on TBS and released on videocassette. It is now available on DVD.
• Missing Episode: Climax! was one of the rare few CBS programs of the 1950s to be broadcast in color, but sadly, kinescopes were still only done in black-and-white at the time Casino Royale aired, which means the original color broadcast will remain lost forever, and any future recolorisation/restoration have to be done manually.
• Playing Against Type: Peter Lorre is not an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain for once.
• Urban Legend: A rumor claims that, after his character Le Chiffe died, Peter Lorre stood up and walked off the stage while the camera was still fixed on him. As reported by Snopes, this blooper did not happen on Casino Royale, but a similar one did indeed happen on Climax!, more specifically on its premiere episode. This confusion was likely helped along by Casino Royale's unavailability (see above) preventing a quick debunking of the rumor. This may have also been helped by most existing prints having an ending in which Le Chiffre is shown groping for his hat before the show ends, making it look like a blooper, when in reality Le Chiffre grabbed the razor concealed there and held Vesper hostage, followed by Bond shooting him dead.
• What Could Have Been: The network apparently commissioned a James Bond TV show based on the strength of this one special. Ian Fleming wrote a few outlines for some episodes and then negotiations fell through, and Fleming used the outlines he had already created and that became the eighth Bond book For Your Eyes Only. Then in 1958 a certain Albert R. Broccoli got interested in the rights to Fleming's Bond books, and the rest, as they say, is history (and would prevent Bond from venturing on TV to this day). Fleming would have his turn in television again when he did some concept work for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., however.

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