I was reading the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine which features an interview with Robert Banks Stewart; a British TV producer and writer probably best known for creating Shoestring and Bergerac, amongst other notable successes. It's interesting because at one point he talks about his involvement with an aborted attempt to make the first Bond movie, based on the Casino Royale novel; there's no date given but I'm guessing it would have to have been around 1960 or earlier.
"'Interpol Calling' helped me to get a job as one of the lead writers on 'Danger Man', which starred Patrick McGoohan..... Because I'd written 'Danger Man', 20th Century Fox hired me to write the screenplay for 'Casino Royale', which was going to be the first James Bond film. McGoohan was going to play Bond and Robert Morley would play Le Chiffre. I met Ian Fleming very briefly in a hotel in London and he told me I could feel free with my adaptation. There had already been another script where the writer had set the story during the war; Bond was still a British agent but in this version Le Chiffre was a Nazi. I reassured Fleming that I wasn't going to do anything like that.
The producer was a Russian called Gregory Ratoff, and I loved him. We travelled all round Europe together, going to France, Switzerland and Italy researching the treatment for the script. Gregory was going to direct the film as well .... I was faithful to the book but I took out the big torture scene. Darryl Zanuck, the executive producer from Fox, said there was no way we could show a guy having his balls whacked with a carpet beater, so I moved it to an out of season fairground and had Bond tied to a bumper car, trying to avoid another car that had plastic explosives strapped to it."
He then goes on to tell a story about how the producer took him and Robert Morley to Belgium on a private plane to practise gambling! Sadly Ratoff died later that year. He also then mentions going to see Dr No a few years later after trying to get interest in his script -and Bond- but failing. He knew Connery from when Sean -or as he was then: Tom, or 'Big Tam'- was a pool attendant in Edinburgh!
It's not the first time Ratoff's project has been mentioned, (itself not the only CR script out there at that time) but I've not heard of Banks Stewart's involvement before, or indeed the stars attached. I thought it might be of interest and it's worth getting DWM to read a bit more about it.
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