Development[]
In November 1952, several months before the publication of his first James Bond novel Casino Royale, Ian Fleming purchased the small theatrical agency Glidrose Productions Limited to make a screen adaptation of the novel. After the publication Curtis Brown, Associated British Pictures and the Music Corporation of America all expressed interest in purchasing the film rights. Curtis Brown later licensed the rights to produce a one-hour Americanized television adaptation for Climax! on CBS. In March 1955, Fleming sold the film rights of his novel Casino Royale to the producer [[Gregory Ratoff for $6,000 ($60,693 in 2021 dollars). after Ratoff had bought a $600 six-month option from Fleming the previous year. Ratoff commissioned Lorenzo Semple Jr., to write a script but both men thought Bond was unbelievable and stupid. According to Semple, Ratoff considered the project needed Bond to be female and wished to cast Susan Hayward as 'Jane' Bond. In January 1956, The New York Times reported Ratoff had set up a production company with Michael Garrison to produce a film adaptation, but their pitch was rejected by 20th Century Fox and they were unable to find financial backers before his death in December 1960.
Talent agent Charles K. Feldman had represented Ratoff and bought the film rights from his widow. Albert R. Broccoli, who had held an interest in adapting James Bond for some years, offered to purchase the Casino Royale rights from Feldman, but he declined. Feldman and his friend, the director Howard Hawks, had an interest in adapting Casino Royale and considered Leigh Brackett as a writer and Cary Grant as James Bond. They eventually decided not to proceed after they saw Dr. No (1962), the first Bond adaptation made by Broccoli and his partner Harry Saltzman through their company Eon Productions.
By 1964, with Feldman having invested nearly $550,000 of his own money into pre-production of Casino Royale, he decided to try a deal with Eon Productions and United Artists. The attempt at a co-production eventually fell through as Feldman frequently argued with Broccoli and Saltzman, especially regarding the profit divisions and when the Casino Royale adaptation would start production. Feldman eventually decided to offer his project to Columbia Pictures through a script written by Ben Hecht, and the studio accepted. Given Eon's series led to spy films being in vogue at the time, Feldman opted to make his film a spoof of the Bond series instead of a straightforward adaptation.
=Screenplay[]
Ben Hecht's contribution to the project, if not the final result, was in fact substantial and he wrote several complete drafts. In May 1966, Time magazine reported that Hecht had "three bashes" at completing a script, while his papers contained material from four surviving screenplays by Hecht. His treatments were almost entirely "straight" adaptations, far closer to the original source novel than the spoof which the final production became. A draft from 1957 discovered in Hecht's papers — but which does not identify the screenwriter — is a direct adaptation of the novel, albeit with the Bond character absent, instead being replaced by a poker-playing American gangster.
Later drafts see vice made central to the plot, with the Le Chiffre character becoming head of a network of brothels (as he is in the novel) whose patrons are then blackmailed by Le Chiffre to fund Spectre (an invention of the screenwriter). The racy plot elements opened up by this change of background include a chase scene through Hamburg's red light district that results in Bond escaping disguised as a female mud wrestler. New characters appear such as Lili Wing, a brothel madam and former lover of Bond whose ultimate fate is to be crushed in the back of a garbage truck, and Gita, wife of Le Chiffre. The beautiful Gita, whose face and throat are hideously disfigured as a result of Bond using her as a shield during a gunfight in the same sequence which sees Wing meet her fate, goes on to become the prime protagonist in the torture scene that features in the book, a role originally Le Chiffre's.
Virtually nothing from Hecht's scripts was ever filmed, although a draft dated to February 1964 has a line of dialogue containing the idea of MI6 having given multiple agents the name of James Bond after Bond has died to confuse the other side. Hecht died from a heart attack in April 1964, two days after finishing his script and before he was able to present it to Feldman. Joseph Heller (and his friend George Mandel) worked on the project for a few weeks in early 1965 submitting more than 100 pages after Feldman offered Heller $150,000. Heller later wrote about this episode in How I found James Bond, lost my self-respect and almost made $150,000 in my spare time.
The script was then completely re-written by Billy Wilder, and by the time the film reached production, only the idea that the name James Bond should be given to a number of other agents remained. This key plot device in the finished film, in the case of Hecht's version, occurs after the demise of the original James Bond (an event which happened prior to the beginning of his story) which, as Hecht's M puts it, "not only perpetuates his memory, but confuses the opposition."
In addition to the credited writers, Woody Allen, Peter Sellers, Val Guest, Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern and Wilder are all believed to have contributed to the screenplay to varying degrees. Feldman called it "a four ring circus". Sellers had hired Southern to write his dialogue (and not the rest of the script) to "outshine" Orson Welles and Allen.
Casting[]
Feldman approached Sean Connery to play Bond, but rejected Connery's offer to do the film for $1 million.
Feldman originally intended to cast Terence Cooper as Bond and had him under personal contract for two years prior to production.
Feldman had worked with Sellers on What's New Pussycat? and offered the actor a part as Bond. Sellers originally turned him down saying he felt the image of Bond was "too fixed". Feldman persuaded Sellers to change his mind by asking the actor to instead play a "little man" who plays Bond.
Filming[]
Filming started 11 January 1966.
The principal filming was carried out at Pinewood Studios, Shepperton Studios and Twickenham Studios in London. Extensive sequences also featured London, notably Trafalgar Square and the exterior of 10 Downing Street. Mereworth Castle in Kent was used as the home of Sir James Bond, which is blown up early in the film.
Much of filming for M's Scottish castle was done on location in County Meath, Ireland, with Killeen Castle as the focus. However, the car chase sequences where Bond leaves the castle were shot in the Perthshire village of Killin with further sequences in Berkshire (specifically Old Windsor and Bracknell).
Filming had wrapped by October 1966 at which stage Feldman said the budget was between $8.5–9.5 million, of which the cast cost $3 million. Sellers was to receive a percentage of the gross after the takings reached $17.5 million.
Directors[]
Five different directors helmed different segments and stunt coordinator Richard Talmadge co-directed the final sequence.
Feldman said that Huston contributed 38 minutes in the final cut, Hughes 25 minutes, McGrath 20 minutes, Parrish 20 minutes, and Guest 26 minutes.
Huston's sequence involved Sir James Bond meeting the representatives of agencies. It was shot in Ireland and Kent in April 1966. Huston worked on his section of the script with Wolf Mankowitz. Huston had written most of Beat the Devil on location but says "that was discipline compared to this. It was day to day then it's moment to moment here." Huston wanted Robert Morley as M but when he was unavailable, the director decided to play the role himself. Huston says the film "was broached to me as a lark, which it was.
McGrath shot for six weeks. Bob Parrish filmed the segment with Andress and Sellers at Shepperton.
Hughes was not known for comedies generally but had just directed Drop Dead Darling.
Guest wrote and directed the last section and was given the responsibility of splicing the various "chapters" together. Feldman says Parrish was to provide "suspense" while McGrath did "Sellers like comedy".
He was offered the unique title of coordinating director but declined, claiming the chaotic plot would not reflect well on him if he were so credited. His extra credit was labelled 'additional sequences' instead.
Director credits:
- Val Guest (additional sequences; scenes with Allen and additional scenes with Niven)
- Ken Hughes (Berlin scenes)
- John Huston (scenes at Sir James Bond's house and scenes at Scottish castle)
- Joseph McGrath (scenes with Sellers, Andress and Welles)
- Robert Parrish (some casino scenes with Sellers and Welles)
- Richard Talmadge (second unit)
Peter Sellers[]
Part of the behind-the-scenes drama of production concerned the filming of the segments involving Sellers. Screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz declared that Sellers felt intimidated by Welles to the extent that, except for a couple of shots, neither was in the studio simultaneously. Other versions of the legend depict the drama stemming from Sellers being slighted, in favour of Welles, by Princess Margaret (whom Sellers knew) during her visit to the set. Welles also insisted on performing magic tricks as Le Chiffre, and the director obliged. Director Guest wrote that Welles did not think much of Sellers, and had refused to work with "that amateur". Director McGrath, a personal friend of Sellers, was punched by the actor when he complained about Sellers' on-set behaviour.
Some Sellers biographies suggest that he took the role of Bond to heart, and was annoyed at the decision to make Casino Royale a comedy, as he wanted to play Bond straight. This is illustrated in somewhat fictionalised form in the film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, based on the biography by Roger Lewis, who has claimed that Sellers kept re-writing and improvising scenes to make them play seriously. This story is in agreement with the observation that the only parts of the film close to the book are the ones featuring Sellers and Welles. In the end, Sellers's involvement with the film was cut abruptly short.
Cameo appearances[]
Jean-Paul Belmondo and George Raft received major billing, even though both only appear briefly. Both appear during the climactic brawl at the end, Raft flipping his trademark coin and promptly shooting himself dead with a backward-firing pistol, while Belmondo appears wearing a fake moustache as the French Foreign Legion officer who requires an English phrase book to translate "merde!" into "ooch!" during his fistfight. Raft's coin flip, which originally appeared in Scarface (1932), had been spoofed by Raft a few years earlier in Some Like It Hot (1959).
At the Intercon science fiction convention held in Slough in 1978, David Prowse commented on his part, apparently his big-screen debut. He claimed that he was originally asked to play "Super Pooh", a giant Winnie-the-Pooh in a superhero costume who attacks Tremble during the Torture of The Mind sequence. This idea, as with many others in the film's script, was rapidly dropped, and Prowse was re-cast as a Frankenstein-type monster for the closing scenes. The final sequence was principally directed by former actor/stuntman Richard Talmadge.
Unfinished scenes[]
Sellers went absent for days or weeks at a time, refused to appear in his scenes with Welles and exited before all of his scenes had been shot. As a result, Sellers was unavailable for the filming of an ending and other interlinking scenes, leaving the filmmakers to devise a way to make the existing footage work without him. The framing device of a beginning and ending with Niven was created to salvage the material. Guest, who had been given the task of creating a narrative thread which would link all segments of the film, chose to use the original Bond and Vesper Lynd as linking characters.
Signs of missing footage from the Sellers segments are evident at various points. Tremble is not captured on camera; an outtake of Sellers entering a racing car was substituted. In this outtake, he calls for the car, à la The Pink Panther, to chase down Vesper and her kidnappers; the next thing that is shown is Tremble being tortured. Outtakes of Sellers were also used for Tremble's dream sequence (pretending to play the piano on Andress' torso), in the finale – blowing out the candles while in highland dress – and at the end of the film when all the various "James Bond doubles" are together. In the kidnap sequence, Tremble's death is also very abruptly inserted; it consists of pre-existing footage of Tremble being rescued by Vesper, followed by a later-filmed shot of her abruptly deciding to shoot him, followed by a freeze-frame over some of the previous footage of her surrounded by bodies (noticeably a zoom-in on the previous shot).
As well as this, an entire sequence involving Tremble going to the front for the underground James Bond training school (which turns out to be under Harrods, of which the training area was the lowest level) was never shot, thus creating an abrupt cut from Vesper announcing that Tremble will be James Bond to Tremble exiting the lift into the training school.
Many sequences were dropped, so that several actors never appeared in the final cut, including Ian Hendry (as 006, the agent whose body is briefly seen being disposed of by Vesper), Mona Washbourne and Arthur Mullard.