Broccoli and Harry Saltzman – the other being Thunderball (1961) – and resurrected it as a spoof of the spy craze. The show however had Bond unforgivably played as a rough diamond American card player, facing off against a Le Chiffre played by Peter Lorre.ĭuring the midst of the 1960s Bond craze created by the Sean Connery films, someone remembered Casino Royale, the only of two James Bond novels not owned by producers Albert R. The answer is in fact Barry Nelson who played James Bond in a 1954 one-hour live adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel Casino Royale (1953), which appeared as an episode of the tv anthology series Climax (1954-8). Trivia question:– Who was the first actor to play James Bond? If you replied Sean Connery you are wrong.
