An episode of the American dramatic anthology series Climax!, the show was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, and stars Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, and Linda Christian.

In 1954, CBS paid the author Ian Fleming $1,000 ($11,346 in 2023 dollars[2]) to adapt his first novel, Casino Royale, into a one-hour television adventure as part of their dramatic anthology series Climax!, which ran between October 1954 and June 1958.

[6] The hour-long Casino Royale episode aired on October 21, 1954,[7] as a live production and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent James Bond, with Peter Lorre in the role of Le Chiffre,[8] and was hosted by William Lundigan.

[11] Reports that toward the end of the broadcast "the coast-to-coast audience saw Peter Lorre, the actor playing Le Chiffre, get up off the floor after his death and begin to walk to his dressing room",[12] do not appear to be accurate.

[13] In 1958, four years after the production of Casino Royale, CBS invited Fleming to write 32 episodes over a two-year period for a television show based on the Bond character.

Eventually, the missing footage (minus the last seconds of the end credits) was found and included on a Spy Guise & Cara Entertainment VHS release.

[7] David Cornelius of Efilmcritic.com remarked that "the first act freely gives in to spy pulp cliché" and noted that he believed Nelson was miscast and "trips over his lines and lacks the elegance needed for the role."

"[6] Peter Debruge of Variety also praised Lorre, considering him the source of "whatever charm this slipshod antecedent to the Bond oeuvre has to offer", and complaining that "the whole thing seems to have been done on the cheap".