Mark,
Re your comments about CASINO ROYALE:
"Guess it took a while to live down the James Bond
spoof/parody of the same title -- was that title owned by
someone other than the Broccolis? Thunderball was, right?
Isn't that why it could be remade as Never Say Never?"
When Fleming sold the rights to the Bond characters and to
all past and future Bond novels to the Saltzman/Broccoli
partnership, there were two novels that were
unavailable.
On was CASINO ROYALE, because Fleming had already sold both
the TV and film rights to that book shortly after it was
published.
The other was THUNDERBALL, because it was a novelization of
an original Bond screenplay, on which Fleming collaborated
with Irish movie producer Kevin McClory and screnwriter Jack
Whittingham, which meant that the movie rights were not
Fleming's to sell.
THUNDERBALL eventually became the fourth Bond movie when
Saltzman/Broccoli reached an agreement with McClory that
included, among other things, McClory getting sole credit as
the producer of the film, and getting remake rights ten years
after the release of the picture. Getting a remake made
turned out to be rockier than it probably should have been,
but eventually McClory was able to get that made as NEVER SAY
NEVER AGAIN in 1983.
The guy who owned the rights to CASINO ROYALE tried to make a
similar deal with Saltzman/Broccoli, but, from what I've
read, the working relationship between McClory and
Saltzman/Broccoli was not an altogether happy one, and the
two partners were not anxious to get into another similar
arrangement.
Left with rights to a book that he felt wouldn't work as a
straight spy film without Connery, the guy who owned CASINO
ROYALE decided to do a flat-out comedy spoof. That's how the
1967 film came about.
There's an even earlier version of CASINO ROYALE from 1954.
It was a live-broadcast TV play shown on the anthology series
CLIMAX (the same anthology series in which Dick Powell
returned to the role of Phil Marlowe in a TV version of THE
LONG GOODBYE).
Barry Nelson played Agent "Jimmy" Bond of the CIA
(erroneously said to stand for "Combined Intelligence
Agencies") whose partner on the case is Leiter of Britain's
MI-6. French Intelligence Agent Rene Mathis and
damsel-in-distress Vesper Lynd were combined into
"Vesper Mathis" and Peter Lorre played "Le Chiffre."
This TV version was released on VHS some years ago, and I
believe the latest DVD release of the 1967 spoof includes it
as a "special feature."
JIM DOHERTY
JIM DOHERTY
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