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Peter Sellers in Casino Royale 1967

AViewToATeabagAViewToATeabag
edited March 2014 in Bond Movies Posts: 11
Recently read that Peter Sellers wanted to play Bond 'straight' and took the character to heart during the 1967 production. I would have loved to have seen Sellers play Bond for real and such a shame the producers didn't try and make a serious Bond film. With Orson Welles as Le Chiffre even an unofficial serious Casino Royale would probably have been better than Connery's YOLT of the same year.

Comments

  • barryt007barryt007
    edited March 2014 Posts: 19,339
    Sellers was very demanding and hard to please on set,also suffering from bad depression often,so i doubt he would have been selected.
    Im not sure he had the physique for it either,but i'm sure he could have played another '00 if Bond was to meet one back then.

    Welles could well have played a good villain.
  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    Posts: 3,157
    I've read somewhere that Connery was offered the role for Casino Royale, but he refused due to his relationship with EON. If only...!
  • Samuel001Samuel001 Moderator
    Posts: 13,356
    To begin with EON were thinking about partnering up, as they did with Thunderball.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Peter Sellers could play most anything. I heard about this before, and sorry it did not come to pass. On the other hand, maybe EON would not bother doing CR if it had already been done straight before, so maybe a good thing?
  • AViewToATeabagAViewToATeabag
    Posts: 11
    I've ordered a copy of CR 1967 as I've never managed to watch it all the way through before and not seen it on the tv for a while.
  • RevelatorRevelator
    edited March 2014 Posts: 2,921
    The prospect is interesting, but I don't think Peter Sellers would have succeeded in playing Bond 'straight.' What the biographies of Sellers make clear is that he had no "real" personality. When he wasn't imitating someone, he was a blank. Had he tried to play Bond by drawing on his "real" self--a self he didn't really have--he would have likely been uninteresting and bland. On the other hand, had he tried to play Bond by taking on aspects of Connery (or Cary Grant or any other dashing actor with Bondian attributes) he would have been performing yet another impersonation--and it might have come off badly, since he didn't have the looks, presence or natural suaveness required from an actor playing Bond.

    In any case, Sellers' chance to play a serious Bond was squandered the minute producer Charlie Feldman decided not to use Ben Hecht's script, which faithfully and by all accounts superbly adapted Fleming's novel. Hecht's vision was of a daringly adult Bond film that would retain the wit and flamboyance of the Connery films. Pulling it off would have required an actor of Connery's charisma and screen presence, and I don't think Sellers fit the bill.

    Note: for more on Hecht's script, see Jeremy Duns's blog (http://jeremyduns.net/2013/09/06/rogue-royale/). His ebook Rogue Royale shows how he discovered the script and demonstrates why the project could have been the greatest Bond film never made.
    barryt007 wrote:
    Welles could well have played a good villain.

    Definitely! Welles was considered for Blofeld back when McClory's Thunderball remake involved robotic sharks in New York, and he would have been a perfect Bond villain. To bad Broccoli didn't consider using him in The Spy Who Loved Me.
  • barryt007barryt007
    Posts: 19,339
    AViewToATeabag wrote:
    I've ordered a copy of CR 1967 as I've never managed to watch it all the way through before and not seen it on the tv for a while.

    I hope you didnt pay too much...i believe the bin-men collect the rubbish on Tuesdays ?

    :>
  • BAIN123BAIN123
    edited March 2014 Posts: 11,189
    I think Sellers might have made a good Bond had he took off his glasses and lost that slightly "nerdy" look. I wonder if that "bland" quality @Revelator mentioned could have worked in his favour. Bond was afterall meant to be "anonymous".
  • barryt007barryt007
    Posts: 19,339
    Once he started playing Clouseau he would have had no chance of becoming Bond anyway,he could never be taken seriously.
  • NapoleonPluralNapoleonPlural
    edited March 2014 Posts: 512
    67's CR is a terrific romp, but only the second half. The first is the most awful, unfunny film ever, terribly laborious and Niven with his awful 'comic' lisp or stutter. Thankfully he does lose it later and other characters turn up, making it more Hellzapoppin.

    Of course, see The Life and Death of Peter Sellers film with Geoffrey Rush for a take on the CR shoot.
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