For all its troubled production and ultimately slight connection to Fleming and Bond as we know him, the 1966 ‘Casino Royale’ film would provide something of a meta-commentary on the cinematic rendering of Bond as the ‘original’ James Bond, played David Niven, laments a man ‘ …vocationally devoted, sublimely disinterested. It would be the first on-screen adaptation for Bond, with an American TV network hopelessly missing the point and giving the world Barry Nelson as an American Bond. The book’s opening lines, ‘ The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning’ is now seem apropos for Fleming’s literary Bond, reflecting a mixture of sophisticate spy and grimy paid murderer. Since it was first published in 1953, ‘Casino Royale’ has been a marker of both the pleasures and the problems of the James Bond character and the various media in which he’s been portrayed.
