Peter Lorre
Le Premier Méchant de James Bond

Yes, Peter Lorre played the first James Bond villain when he took the role of Le Chiffre (pronounced "leu SHEEF-ruh"), who was the evil SMERSH agent who was bested by Bond at the baccarat bank. Their epic duel was the high point in the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale which was published in 1953.

Of course the book introduced us to the character of the suave and debonair 007.

Then [Bond] lit his seventieth cigarette of the day ...

Peter played Le Chiffre, not in a film, but on a 1954 television special. Performed live, (albeit recorded), this was only a year after the novel was released and shows that from the first Hollywood recognized that the James Bond novels were a potentially lucrative and highly marketable commodity.

But for various reasons, it would be another eight years before Bond again hit the screen with the release of the motion picture Dr. No. This was the first full length movie to feature 007 and to this day remains one of the best. The "bad guy" - Dr. Julius No - was played by Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman.

Author Ian Fleming had sold the rights to Casino Royale for the television show as a one shot deal. Then in 1960, he negotiated a movie contract with another producer, Gregory Ratoff. Originally having a six-month option, Gregory soon bought the rights outright. But no film was made, and Gregory in turn sold the rights to Charles Feldman who was the founder of Famous Artists, a talent agency that represented some of the biggest stars.

Again nothing came of the deal. It wasn't for want of trying, though. One writer researched the history of the book and films and found that in the early 1960's a number of scripts were written. Of particular interest to Hollywood buffs is that Charles, when he started looking for a screenwriter, turned to Ben Hecht.

Although he is virtually unknown today, Ben Hecht was once one of the most famous writers in the English speaking world. Working first as a journalist, novelist, and short story writer, Ben achieved his greatest fame as a playwright. His play The Front Page, a comedy about the newspaper business and which was co-authored with Charles MacArthur (husband of Helen Hayes and father of Hawaii-Five-O's James MacArthur), was a smash hit from the late 1920's and through the 1940's.

But in Hollywood Ben got the reputation of being an extremely fast and facile screenwriter (he later won an Oscar). His scripts rarely needed much editing and Ben got at least as much work for re-writing and editing screenplays from other writers than for his original works.

Because he could turn out scripts at speed and in near final form, Ben could claim top-dollar for himself. The story is that Daryl F. Zanuck wanted Ben to work on a script. So one of Zanuck's assistants contacted Ben.

"He's bound for New York in two days", the assistant reported, "but if you want, he'll work on your script all the way from Pasadena to Grand Central Station."

"And what does he want for this labor of love?" demanded Zanuck.

"Mr. Hecht says he has a fondness for full round sums," the assistant replied. "The price he asks is one hundred thousand dollars."

"Call him again, "Zanuck said, "and ask him how much he'll take to work on the script as far as Kansas City."

Ben did turn out several complete scripts for Casino Royale. These were more or less based on the original story. But for some reason, nothing came of the scripts and ultimately they lay in library stacks until they were discovered around 2012.

So we might never have seen any James Bond films except that Ian met with Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman of EON Productions. The deal was for one film with the option for three others and the selection was to be at Cubby's and Harry's pleasure. But because the earlier agreement with Feldman still stood, Casino Royale was not part of EON's options.

But with the popularity of four Bond movies - Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball - Charles decided to produce Casino Royale after all.

The movie was released in 1967 under the auspices of Columbia Pictures. Often called a "spy spoof" the film was - shall we say - a travesty. No, it was garbage. Let's go even further and say it was ein Stück ...

Well, as this is a family valued website, we'll just say it wasn't very good.

The movie today is of interest mainly to show the type of commercial schlock that came out of the 1960's. Starring Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, David Niven, Ursula Andress, Deborah Kerr, Orson Welles (as Le Chiffe) along with a cast of dozens, it was (and is) one of the worst movies ever to come out of Hollywood (or anywhere else). And if there is an award for the stupidest ending of a motion picture, this film will win hands down.

Although we can't deny that the 1954 television show - created for American audiences - also takes considerable liberties with the novel, at least the story remains pretty much intact. Actor Barry Nelson plays the American secret agent Jimmy Bond who is tasked with defeating Le Chiffre (Peter) at baccarat and thus depletes the funds that can be used against the forces of righteousness. Jimmy is from the CIA - that's the Combined Intelligence Agency - and his partners are Clarence Leiter (spelled "Letter" in the closing credits) and Vesper Mathis, played by Linda Christian.

Which gives us other James Bond trivia esoterica. If you're ever asked who was the first Bond girl, it was not Ursula Andress in Dr. No or even Eunice Gayson (Eunice is in the first scenes in Dr. No and Ursula doesn't appear until more than halfway through). It was Linda. Linda had appeared in a number of movies before and at the time she played in Casino Royale she was the wife of the then big name star Tyrone Power. Later she married Edmund Purdom, once well known for playing the lead role of Sinuhe in the swords and sandals extravaganza The Egyptian.

The James Bond novels now are more than half a century old and so are quite dated. The antiquity of the books isn't evident just in the type of gadgets that Bond employs (which are few) but is more regarding the social norms and attitudes spouted. And if you advocate respect and diversity, be warned! Once Bond griped about giving women the vote and it's hard for modern readers of any intelligence to get through Live and Let Die even in the toned-down American edition.

But for cultural historians of the 20th century, the books preserve the attitudes of the posh upper middle class and well-to-do Englishmen immediately following World War II. The descriptions of Bond's huge extravaganzal lifestyle - including his opulent wasteful meals - were also a welcome escape for the citizens of Britain who faced the continued post-war rationing and austerity which continued up to the mid-1950's.

But Casiono Royale was modern in the sense that it led to what is now de rigueur for any action novel or film today. That is, you have to have violence. And you certainly get that in the book's famous "torture" scene. There we read after being taken prisoner by Le Chiffre,

[Bond] was utterly a prisoner, naked and defenceless. His buttocks and the underpart of his body protruded through the seat of the chair towards the floor.

If there's any doubt as to what's going to happen, Le Chiffre enlightens us:

You see, my dear Bond, with a man it is quite unnecessary to indulge in refinements. With this simple instrument [a carpet beater], or with almost any other object, one can cause a man as much pain as is possible or necessary. ... It is not only the immediate agony, but also the thought that your manhood is being gradually destroyed and that at the end, if you will not yield, you will no longer be a man.

In the 2006 film with Daniel Craig, the essentials of the scene were retained. As one (male) viewer commented, "I was ready to confess after the first whack".

Of course, the television show, being broadcast in 1954, had to sanitize the scene considerably. "Jimmy" Bond was tied up, fully clothed except for his shoes. He was then placed in an empty bath tub. Peter - or rather "Le Chiffre" - then used a pair of pliers on Jimmy's toes, not Jimmy's ...

Well, let's just stick with Jimmy's toes.

Unlike the novel and the 1967 movie, a SMERSH agent does not show up as a deux ex machina to save Bond (he says he cannot kill Bond since he has no specific instructions to do so). Instead Jimmy manages to get free and ends up shooting - but only wounding - Le Chiffre. So once more right and justice prevail.

By the time Peter starred in Casino Royale, he was one of the best known movie actors in the world. Starting as a stage actor in Germany in the 1920's, he soon appeared in films. At the time Germany was one of the most artistically innovative countries in the world and one of the leaders in the emerging cinema industry.

Peter hit the big time in 1931 with the German film M which is now considered the masterpiece of director Fritz Lang. In M Peter played a man so evil that the crooks of the city eventually haul him before a kangaroo court. But before their sentence can be carried out the police show up and rescue the murderer.

Born in 1904 in László Löwenstein (also spelled Ladislav Loewenstein) in Rózsahegy, Austria-Hungary, Peter was non-observant, but his family was Jewish. Unfortunately, that was enough for the German government that came to power in 1933. So Peter immigrated to America, and in 1934, he was cast as the villain in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. It's not exactly clear how he picked up his distinctive and perfect English with the surprisingly American accent although from the mid-1930's onward he did play largely in American films.

A rather unusual facet of Peter's career was his appearances in unrelated movies with Sydney Greenstreet. What emerged was the image of Sydney as the large, plump leader of the duo and Peter as the young, thin (yes, thin) factotum. They appeared in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1943), Background to Danger (1943), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Passage to Marseille (1944), The Verdict (1946), and Three Strangers (1946). The partnership was given a satirical tribute in the Get Smart episode, "Maxwell Smart, Private Eye" where the large and hefty Berry Kroeger played "Mr. Peter" and thin soft-spoken Philip Roth played "Mr. Sydney". The joke - likely to be missed by the younger viewers - is that Philip ("Mr. Sydney") was playing the Peter Lorre character while it was Berry ("Mr. Peter") who was patterned after Sydney Greenstreet. Of course, in the show everyone kept getting them reversed.

After appearing in M, Peter realized he was being typecast and tried to avoid roles where he played a villain. But with his delivery and sinister presence, those were the roles the producers saw him best suited. And Peter knew you had to take the roles as they came. So he played villains.

By the 1960's Peter was one of the leading actors specializing in playing bad guys. So in 1963 during the pre-release promotionals of The Raven, American International Pictures touted - or at least let the public believe - that the movie was a straightforward horror picture. The trailers made much that the "Triumvirate of Terror", Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter were appearing together. So many in the audience were surprised when they sat down and saw a comedy.

But rather than be miffed, the audience loved it, and The Raven was a financial and critical success. So AIP lined up the next movie without any subterfuge. The Comedy of Terrors starred not just Boris, Peter, and Vincent but brought in veteran actor Basil Rathbone as well. Surprisingly - as it really is a funny movie - The Comedy of Terrors didn't do that well.

On the set Peter tended to ad-lib and that could throw the other actors off. The scriptwriter of The Raven, Richard Matheson, liked to craft well-thought out dialog, but he also knew Peter's penchant. So he would sometimes just write "Peter speaks" in the script. That didn't always work and Boris, who was classically trained and had difficulty with improvised dialogue, became frustrated in his scenes with Peter.

Not that Peter didn't learn the lines. In one scene Peter's departure from the script was dragging things out.

"For Christ's sake, Peter," cried Vincent, "just speak the lines!"

When they re-shot the scene, Peter delivered his lines perfectly.

But ominous signs were appearing. During the shooting of The Raven, Peter was clearly not feeling well. And on the set of The Comedy of Terrors, he would finish a scene and then fall back in a chair. The other actors worried that he was dying.

Peter's problems were not new. In 1960, he had been a guest star on a television show and the director remembered that Peter would say he wasn't feeling well. The director offered to shoot some alternate scenes, but Peter said no. Just give him a few minutes and he'd be OK. Then he'd retire to his dressing room and emerge shortly thereafter. He'd be fine until a while later he again mentioned he wasn't feeling well and again retire to his room. The cycle continued and finally it occurred to the director that Peter was using drugs.

It's often assumed that Peter was addicted to morphine. You'll read the habit began when he was hospitalized with pulmonary tuberculosis in the 1920's and you'll also read that it was when he had an attack of gallstones. However, one biography only mentioned Peter's problem with prescription drugs and never mentioned morphine in the entire book. Of course, at the time morphine was prescribed more than it is now (which is almost never except in hospitals). So the accounts are not necessarily contradictory.

The later films opened a new venue for Peter. He began receiving a number of comedy scripts and his last film appearance was in - get this - the Jerry Lewis film The Patsy. Here Peter played a movie director and it looked like he just might be getting the breaks he always wanted from sinister characters. But we'll never know. When The Patsy was released in September, 1964, Peter had been dead for six months.

References

The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, Stephen Youngkin, University Press of Kentucky, 2005.

"Casino Royale", Barry Nelson (actor), Peter Lorre (actor), Linda Christian (actor), Michael Pate (actor), William Lundigan (presenter/host), Jerry Goldsmith (conductor/composer), Bretaigne Windust (producer), William Brown, Jr. (director), Ian Fleming (novel), Antony Ellis (scriptwriter), Charles Bennett (scriptwriter), CBS Television, 1954, Internet Movie Data Base.

"Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond", Andrew Lycett, Turner Publishing, 1996.

"The Movie Magic of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet", Arts and Entertainment, Richard G. Carter, 2016

"Maxwell Smart, Private Eye", Don Adams (actor), Barbara Feldon (actor), Edward Platt (actor), Berry Kroeger (actor), Philip Roth (actor), Robert Karvelas (actor), Elroy Schwartz (writer), Bruce Bilson (director), Paramount, 1967, Internet Movie Data Base.

"Peter Lorre: His life in Film", Geoffrey MacNab, The Independent, April 20, 2006

"Casino Royale: 60 Years Old", Jeremy Duns, The Telegraph, April 13, 2013

Shake Well Before Using, Bennett Cerf, Simon and Schuster, 1948.

The Patsy, Jerry Lewis (actor), Ina Balin (actor), Peter Lorre (actor), Keenan Wynn (actor), John Carradine (actor), Richard Deacon (actor), Ernest D. Glucksman (producer), Jerry Lewis(director), Jerry Lewis (scriptwriter), Bill Richmond (scriptwriter), Paramount, 1964, Internet Movie Data Base.