The first actor to play James Bond onscreen wasn't the great Sean Connery. James Bond author Ian Fleming wanted David Niven for the role in Dr. No, but relative unknown Sean Connery was selected instead. Connery was able to play both the suave charm and ruthlessness of 007 and the series grown bigger with each entry. Starting with Goldfinger, more of an emphasis was put on gadgets and setpieces but by his fifth entry You Only Live Twice, Connery was ready to leave. George Lazenby was chosen as his replacement but despite signing on for seven movies, he departed after his only appearance in On Your Majesty's Secret Service, feeling the franchise would be outdated in the 1970s.
Sean Connery was later lured back for 1971's Diamonds Are Forever before Roger Moore arrived and made the role his own with Live And Let Die. In the decades since Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig have dusted off the License to Kill, and each has left their distinct mark on the character. Craig will sign off with the forthcoming No Time To Die, and it will be interesting to see who takes up 007's mantle next.
Daniel Craig started strong with 2006's Casino Royale, which was based on the first James Bond novel. The rights to this novel were long out of EON's hands, however, and it was previously turned into a rather limp spoof movie in the 1960s starring Peter Sellers - who quit during production - Orson Welles and David Niven. While Connery is the first actor to play James Bond in a movie with Dr. No, the first performer to play the part onscreen was Barry Nelson in CBS's adaptation of Casino Royale for anthology series Climax!
Episodes of Climax! were broadcast live and were essentially filmed plays. Ian Fleming was paid a cool $1000 for the rights to Casino Royale by CBS, with the James Bond novels being little known in America at that time. Barry Nelson was a prolific performer in both film and TV, but he's best remembered for playing Overlook manager Ullman in The Shining. He was cast as the character in Climax's take on Casino Royale, which reimagined the spy as Jimmy Bond, an American agent.
Screen legend Peter Lorre (M) also played Le Chiffre in the Climax! Casino Royale, with the infamous torture scene reimagined as the villain removing Bond's toenails offscreen. Overall, Barry Nelson isn't bad as Bond but making the character American was a mistake, and by the actor's own admission there wasn't much charm to the spy as he was presented on the show. The episode is obviously lacking a lack of the familiar tropes of later movies too, including the gadgets, the vehicles and the Walther PPK, and in the case of the latter, he's seen wielding an FN Model 1900.
Climax's Casino Royale is also of note for Barry Nelson's Jimmy Bond ordering a scotch and water instead of a vodka martini, and it was one of famed composer Jerry Goldsmith's very first gigs. In an alternate universe Climax's! Casino Royale could have led to a James Bond CBS series, which the network commissioned and Ian Fleming even started developing episode outlines for. CBS eventually scrapped the idea and its unknown if Nelson would have returned for the show. In the end, it's for the best it didn't go forward or the James Bond movie franchise as it exists now probably wouldn't have happened.