Spy Factor: BOND - The Journey To The Big Screen - Warped Factor

In which we chart 007's journey to the big screen.

From the completion of his first 007 novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, 41-year old author Ian Fleming believed that movies and television would be the best platform for James Bond. People in the industry seemed to agree with him but multiple deals fell through, resulting in a pile of failed screenplays which Fleming would rewrite and adapt into best-selling short stories and novels instead. These would go on to become the back-bone of the long running movie series.

One of the deals that actually came to fruition resulted in an American TV adaptation of Casino Royale. On the 21st October 1954 a CBS anthology series called Climax!, which presented a different story and different set of characters every episode, featured James Bond's debut adventure as their third ever episode. To say they took liberties with the character is an understatement. Bond was played by Barry Nelson and was depicted as an American spy working for the American Combined Intelligence Agency.

In the teleplay Jimmy Bond (yes, you read that right) arrives at the Casino Royale in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He's shot at whilst entering, and soon meets up with British Secret Service agent Clarence Leiter who briefs Bond about his mission. Jimmy runs into old flame Valerie Mathis (an amalgam of the Vesper Lynd and Rene Mathis characters from the novel), she introduces him to Le Chiffre the Chief Soviet Agent in the area who is nearly always accompanied by three henchman - Basil, Zoltan and Zuroff. Le Chiffre has been gambling with the Soviet funds of his employers and he's down several million francs. Bond's mission is to beat him at a high-stakes card game of Baccarat so Le Chiffre will be ruined.

The episode flopped, and so any hope of a further television adventure for Jimmy Bond ended right there. But Fleming's novels were gaining a lot of fans, amongst them several film producers. Two of which could see the cinematic potential of the series were American Albert (Cubby) Broccoli and Canadian Harry Saltzman. The pair would become the key players in bringing the very British James Bond 007 to the screen.

Saltzman had managed to obtain an option to most of Fleming's work, but the move left him too financially strapped to produce any of them. Broccoli had wanted to produce the Bond novels himself, but he didn't own the rights. So when Saltzman refused to sell but offered a partnership instead, Eon Productions was created (Eon being an abbreviation of "Everything or Nothing"). United Artists were impressed by both the producers enthusiasm and vision and so they agreed to bankroll their proposed James Bond movie series.

Dr. No was chosen to be the first movie in the series, and one of the first directors approached was future Bond legend Guy Hamilton (director of Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, and The Man With The Golden Gun). He declined, and so did many other people as Broccoli and Saltzman struggled to sign anyone to direct the movie - until in stepped a man as smoothly elegant as Bond himself, Terence Young. A very important find, as we will discover.