The fifties were a very frustrating time for Ian Fleming. Hollywood dangled offers for Bond movies at him throughout the decade, but they never materialized. Big screen plans for Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Moonraker all fizzled. Thirty years before writing Never Say Never Again, screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr. collaborated with Russian actor/director Gregory Ratoff on a screen version of Casino Royale. "Gregory thought the story was much too silly. He said: 'Nobody believe this James Bond, so we make him into woman. Then, we make great movie.' The idea was to write it as a vehicle for Susan Hayward." Sadly (or fortunately for us), it was never to be...

CBS Television optioned the rights --at great expense-- for a James Bond TV show, but it also died (Fleming's show outlines became some of the short stories in the book For Your Eyes Only).

Producer Hubbell Robinson bid $10,000 to make a 90-minute TV spectacular of From Russia with Love in 1959, to star James Mason and be sponsored by the Ford Motor Company (imagine Bond driving a bulky Ford instead of an Aston Martin).

The only sale was of Casino Royale to the anthology series, "Climax"...

Casino Royale (CBS TV)

Longitude 78 West

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