I’m no film historian, but I picture Feldman running a SMERSH-like extortion racket on Eon’s Albert R. No,” but didn’t bother to exercise them until four Sean Connery films had made Bond an internationally bankable name. In the case of “Casino Royale,” Feldman bought the rights more than a decade before “Dr. Feldman’s “ Casino Royale,” the first of two unofficial 007 pics (the other being “Never Say Never Again”) in which producers who’d acquired the rights to an Ian Fleming novel set out to make a competing entry on their own. Even the worst Eon-backed Bond movie has the distinction of being better than Charles K.
