Everyone knows that the first James Bond movie was 1962’s Dr. No, starring Sean Connery. But eight years earlier, Bond had actually made his onscreen debut on TV — and he was American. On October 21, 1954, on the CBS anthology series Climax!, agent James Bond made his debut in a 50-minute adaptation of Casino Royale, which had only been published one year prior in 1953. So, although James Bond’s screen adventures began in earnest with Sean Connery in the 1960s, the 1950s featured a Bond misfire that represents a bizarre alternate universe, one in which James Bond wasn’t at all the man we think of today.
James Bond author and creator Ian Fleming was paid $1,000 (roughly $11,721 in 2024 dollars) to allow Casino Royale to become a TV movie. This was a deal Fleming pursued and brokered before he had a book contract; which is why the Climax! version of Casino Royale came out so soon after the book was published. A slightly more contemporary example of this would be Michael Crichton selling the film rights for Jurassic Park before the book was published in 1990. Fleming was so fixated on getting a movie or TV deal for Bond, that he fired off a wire to a Hollywood correspondent named J.M Ruddy asking for advice as to “what sums do studios pay for not yet established writer?”
