Feldman.īelying his reputation as a showboating charlatan (it was said contemptuously of him that “he still sounds much like an agent when he talks”), Feldman had produced such artistically interesting pictures as Orson Welles’s 1948 film of Macbeth and the controversial 1951 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Eon controlled the character and his traditional cinematic presentation, which began in 1962 with Dr No, but Bond’s first appearance in the 1953 novel Casino Royale had been acquired by the independent producer Charles K. When Ian Fleming sold the rights to the James Bond novels to Eon Productions, run by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, there was one strange omission.

So, how did Casino Royale go so entirely awry? It took five directors and an unknown number of screenwriters to marshal the production into some semblance of order, and was bedevilled by its star’s quixotic behaviour, its producer’s ill health and an ever-rising budget. The original film was one of the strangest and most chaotic farragoes in cinema, an all-star mishmash that alternated wildly between genres and tones. Yet while it could be billed as the first “proper” version of Casino Royale, this would ignore its frankly insane 1967 predecessor.

For many, the most successful of these was either Skyfall or his debut in the role in 2006’s Casino Royale, which attracted critical praise for its tougher, stripped-back approach to the character, as well as its surprisingly faithful adaptation of the novel. As audiences eagerly anticipate Daniel Craig’s swansong as James Bond in No Time To Die, there has been much discussion of his earlier appearances as 007.

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