James Bond’s First Filmed Appearance Was Nearly Unrecognizable

There are certain characters in pop culture who, no matter the actor portraying them, conjure up a particular look and feeling about them when they’re thought of or talked about. For instance, the general public image of Batman is someone in a cape and cowl who broods about while fighting crime, a persona that dominates despite the gulf of difference between Adam West and Christian Bale’s screen portrayals of the Caped Crusader. James Bond is undoubtedly such a character; while he’s only been played by six different actors during his 63 years on cinema screens — and these actors all brought something so unique to their portrayals that they’re frequently ranked against each other in order of personal preference — there still exists a consistency to Bond’s pop culture persona.

The reason for this is actually a fairly direct one. When Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed Eon Productions in 1961 while producing their first adaptation of Bond, 1962’s “Dr. No,” they kicked off a franchise that in just a few short years would feature a repeatable formula. Broccoli and Saltzman apparently provided Roald Dahl an actual blueprint to follow when the writer was hired to pen “You Only Live Twice” in 1967, one which the producers felt was the surefire formula for a successful Bond feature. Although the Eon Bond formula was revised slightly over the decades, heirs to the company throne Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson remained true to it throughout their tenure.

However, there have famously been a couple of non-Eon Bonds to appear on the screen. One of them is, ironically, the first Eon Bond, Sean Connery, in the 1983 unofficial entry “Never Say Never Again.” While Connery in that film is still recognizably a version of the Bond we all know and love, the other example of a non-Eon screen Bond is decidedly not. Years before Eon made “Dr. No,” the CBS network licensed Bond creator Ian Fleming’s first novel for adaptation into an hour-long episode of live TV, in which Bond is portrayed in a fashion that seems completely unrecognizable in retrospect.

“Casino Royale,” the first novel chronicling the adventures of British Secret Service agent James Bond by author (and former British Naval Intelligence officer) Ian Fleming, became a smash in England when it was published in 1953. Although the novel wasn’t as popular in America as it was in the UK, that didn’t stop publishers and film and television producers from seeing the potential of the material. After all, by the early ’50s, American entertainment had been suffused with pulp and detective fiction for a couple of decades, with the works of authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain helping to build the genre we know as film noir and give audiences an appetite for hard-boiled antihero characters who enforced the law in ways that bent it. It’s no surprise, then, that producers would see Fleming’s cynical, cold agent as a potential new source of more of this type of thing.

Yet American publishers and producers, perhaps influenced by the country’s growing Cold War xenophobia, perhaps erroneously believing US audiences would be confused by Fleming’s distinctly European adventure, insisted on trying to Americanize Bond and “Casino Royale.” Thus, the novel itself was published in the US with cover art that made it look like a lurid detective story and was re-titled with the pulpier name “You Asked For It.” The reason for this change blatantly appears to be about marketing more than anything else, with Popular Library publishers emulating the detective crime novels that were already on shelves. However, according to Raymond Benson’s “The James Bond Bedside Companion,” the official reasoning was that the publisher was worried Americans wouldn’t be able to pronounce “Royale.” Curse you, extra “e!”

Eschewing the deep-seated Britishness of Fleming’s novel, the CBS TV adaptation of “Casino Royale” (as part of the “Climax!” anthology series) chose to go ahead and make its hero an American nicknamed “Jimmy” Bond (the episode using the nickname just as the back cover of “You Asked For It” does), a suave cat who works for the fictional “Combined Intelligence” agency. In the episode, written by Antony Ellis and Charles Bennett (veterans of some of Alfred Hitchcock’s spy films such as “The 39 Steps” and “Sabotage”), Bond is played by Barry Nelson, himself an occasional noir fixture in films like “Shadow of the Thin Man” and “The Man with My Face.”

Although the episode naturally makes a lot of changes to Fleming’s 213-page novel by condensing it down to a 50-minute drama, it manages to retain the book’s centerpiece concept of Bond needing to best the enemy agent Le Chiffre (played by no less than Peter Lorre) at a game of baccarat. What’s odd is how several of the changes serve to further Americanize Bond, including changing his American contact Felix Leiter into a British agent named Clarence Leiter (Michael Pate). While Nelson acquits himself well enough in the roleall of these changes to Bond’s persona from Fleming’s novel leaves him a little more than a stereotypical cliché of a spy character. The special qualities of Bond already present in Fleming’s prose are nowhere to be found, and thus the initial excitement of the character and the novels died down; Fleming was even approached a few years later by CBS to develop an ongoing Bond series, but the project was scrapped before it ever went before cameras.

When Broccoli and Saltzman were casting “Dr. No,” they bandied about several names before landing on Connery, one of whom was Cary Grant (who was rejected given that the producers shrewdly wanted someone who would commit to future films in the series). Though Grant famously sported a blended British and American accent, his screen persona generally coded him as American, especially when compared to the unmistakably Scottish Connery. Thus, Bond nearly found himself established as vaguely American. However, this concept (perhaps lingering from “Casino Royale” and its adventures in America) was quickly dismissed as soon as Connery’s appeal in the role helped make Bond an international phenomenon.

Yet the possibility of an Americanized Bond did crop up again and did actually make it to the screen. …sort of. When “Octopussy,” the 13th Eon Bond production, was being developed in 1982, Roger Moore was insisting on leaving the role behind, a departure which had been rumored beginning with his preceding appearance as the character, in “For Your Eyes Only.” At first, Eon took Moore at his word and began an extensive search for his replacement. Although this search included people like Timothy Dalton (who would eventually take the role) and Michael Billington, the biggest contender for the role was an American star: James Brolin. Brolin even went as far as screen testing for the part, footage which can be seen on most home media releases of “Octopussy.” It’s undeniably odd to see the thoroughly American Brolin deliver wry bon mots as the character without that distinctive British flavor.

Fortunately (and ironically), it was Connery’s impending appearance in “Never Say Never Again” that allowed the producers to convince Moore to return, and Bond has been played by some manner of UK-raised actor ever since. Who knows, though; with the recent sale of the rights to the character to Amazon, the chance that we may yet see an American Bond may be low, but never zero. The irony is that, should it ever happen, the fanbase can’t quite criticize the choice as going against precedent, because Nelson’s “Jimmy” Bond did get to screens first.