At times, I have tried to imagine how they felt watching a Bond film which, in many ways, was queerer than the increasingly homogenised ‘official’ Eon entries starring Sean Connery. It definitely appealed to a wide audience, some of whom would have been queer. Some are surprised to learn that Casino Royale was very successful on initial release.

Over an hour of material was cut in advance of the premiere and it’s unlikely this will ever be found.Ĭutting the film down worked - financially at least. The film’s disjointed feeling, particularly in the final third, is not down to merely Peter Sellers walking off the set before the film was finished. In this piece, I have confined myself largely to what ended up in the finished two hour film however. Those who know the film but not the production history may be surprised to learn that some of the original ideas for the film were even more maniacal than what ended up on screen (my favourite idea from an early script is the male casino employees unzipping their clothing to reveal they were ‘killer girls’ all along!). While this isn’t the place to repeat a lot of that material, it has been pertinent at various points to reflect on how the ‘too many cooks’ approach to the production led to some queering of the finished outcome, intentionally or not. The most detailed account is that found in Michael Richardson’s book, The Making of Casino Royale (1967) which I strongly recommend. Casino Royale was a chaotic production by all accounts. And in Casino Royale’s case there were more people involved than usual, including five directors and dozens of writers. Any film is, after all, the work of thousands of people. I think it’s bad form to disregard any film because I don’t personally like it. I don’t usually allow my personal feelings (the negative ones at least) about any film to intrude too much in my writing. Mostly though it was because I hazily remembered enjoying at least parts of it as a child and I didn’t want to taint my memories.

I reckoned I’d last seen the film around twenty years ago and I was hesitant to repeat the experience, in large part because I knew it was far from adored by most in the Bond community. I’ll admit that getting to grips with the 1967 Casino Royale was low down my ‘to do’ list when I started Licence To Queer.

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