He fell in love with enemy agent Mata Hari (for the record, she was not a spy) but betrayed her to the firing squad in an act of patriotic self-sacrifice. The real James Bond (David Niven) became an espionage legend during WW I. The film couldn’t use Connery but it has an elegant solution: Connery’s a phony.
This isn’t a bad idea, except spoofs have to be funny. Rather than compete head to head with Eon Films, Feldman turned Casino Royale into a spy spoof.
Ian Fleming sold off the movie rights to Casino in 1955 but nothing came of that until producer Charles Feldman bought them. When I wrote my book on the Bond films, I knew I wanted to include the three non-EON movies: Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery back in the role Operation Kid Brother, an Italian “spaghetti spy film” with Neal Connery as “the brother of secret agent 00-something” and the 1967 Casino Royale (plus the 1954 TV adaptation). Despite all the talent, Casino Royale isn’t just bad, it’s tedious. Let’s see, we have David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles and William Holden behind the scenes there’s Wolf Mankiewicz’s writing and Val Guest and John Huston, among others, directing. Few movies have wasted as much talent as the 1967 film adaptation of Casino Royale.
