Hello. Daliah!

Daliah Lavi, whose exotic beauty matched the lilting siren's call of her name ("lavi" apparently means "lion" in Hebrew), was a Palestine-born dancer, model, and actress who transformed herself into an international singer, best known, perhaps ironically as an Israeli performer, for her German recordings. For the head-scratchers over the name Daliah Lavi, if you're a fan of '60s cinema, one freeze frame will immediately jog your memory of the raven-haired beauty's contribution to the silver screen.

Lavi passed away at the age of 74 on May 3, 2017. Coincidentally, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of one of Hollywoods most beloved runaway train wrecks, "Casino Royale," a mod-sixties, all-star parody of 007 spy flicks from Columbia Pictures that featured the scantily clad Daliah Lavi as a secret agent nicknamed "The Detainer" (pictured above).

Casino Royale, the first 007 novel by Ian Fleming, published in 1953, was, figuratively speaking, the Bond that got away. In 1954, CBS-TV paid Fleming $1000 to adapt Casino Royale into an hour-long live television broadcast. The protagonist was transformed into an American agent for something called Combined Intelligence called Jimmy Bond, and veteran screen heavy Peter Lorre was cast as his nemesis, Le Chiffre.

Early in 1955, Ian Fleming sold the screen rights for Casino Royale for $6000 to Gregory Ratoff, a Russian-born producer-director whose early career as an actor included a memorable turn as producer Max Fabian in 1950's "All About Eve."  After Ratoff's death in 1960, Charles K. Feldman acquired the film rights from Ratoff's widow. Feldman was the orphaned son of a Jewish diamond merchant who worked as a movie cameraman before becoming a lawyer for talent agents and then a flamboyant, wheeling-and-dealing agent himself. As a producer, Feldman worked on "A Streetcar Named Desire," the 1951 film that thrust Marlon Brando from obscurity into major stardom, and "The Seven Year Itch," noteworthy for Marilyn Monroe's encounter with the updraft from a subway grate that pretty much led to her divorce from "Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio.

In June 1961, Ian Fleming sold an option on the movie rights to published and future James Bond novels and short stories to producer Harry Saltzman, who subsequently linked up with Albert R. Broccoli to form Eon Productions, a duumvirate whose ironclad grip on all things 007 would survive them posthumously, except for the elusive Casino Royale.  The film rights for Casino Royale remained with Columbia Pictures until 1989. In 1999, after some deal-making with Sony (Columbia's parent company) and MGM, Eon Productions was finally green-lit for a sanctioned version of the story, featuring the debut of Daniel Craig as James Bond.

Charles K. Feldman initially wanted to produce "Casino Royale" as an Eon Production but couldn't reach an agreement with Saltzman and Broccoli. Undeterred, at least momentarily, Feldman wanted Sean Connery to star in a straightforward adaptation, with Shirley MacLaine (possibly as the duplicitous Vesper Lynd). Connery, having just wrapped up his contractual obligation to Eon with his fifth 007 picture, "You Only Live Twice," wanted to distance himself from the character and told Feldman he would appear in the film but only for $1 million.

Originally budgeted at $6 million by Columbia Pictures, the production of "Casino Royale" spiraled out of control, ending up with a budget of $12 million (over $911 million in current U.S. dollars). Feldman encountered Connery at a party later and told the actor it would have been cheaper if he had paid the one million dollars at the beginning.

We'll continue with the story behind the most mixed-up movie ever, but for now, let's get back to Daliah Lavi's story. Daliah Levinbuck was born in Haifa, then a part of British Palestine. In 1952, ten-year-old Dahlia met Kirk Douglas, who was on location filming "The Juggler," in a role as a refugee from a Nazi concentration camp haunted by survivor's guilt after World War II. When Lavi told Douglas she wanted to be a dancer, he encouraged her parents to send her to Stockholm, Sweden, for dance instruction.

Daliah's father died when she was 16, and she returned to Israel, where she worked as a swimsuit model (pictured above) before becoming a full-time actress. One of her early film roles came in 1960, in a French updating of Voltaire's 18th century social satire Candide: or, The Optimist. In a World War II-era setting, Lavi played Cunégonde, the cousin and lover of Candide, portrayed by Jean-Pierre Cassel.

Lavi's performance prompted The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther to remark (and misspell her name), "A new actress by the name of Dahlia Lavi is impressive along the lines of Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale as the lustrous Cunégonde."

In 1961, Dahlia Lavi portrayed a reporter in a revival of the the classic 1920s German screen chronicles of criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse in "The Return of Doctor Mabuse." The picture featured Gert Fröbe (future 007 nemesis Auric Goldfinger) as a police inspector and American actor Lex Barker (Johnny Weissmuller's brief successor as Tarzan) as an FBI agent.

Daliah Lavi and Lex Barker pose in a publicity photo
for "The Return of Doctor Mabuse."

Lavi (pictured below) was cast as the masochistic romantic lead in 1963's "The Whip and the Body," a lurid gothic thriller starring Christopher Lee and directed by Italian slasher pioneer Mario Bava.

Drastically shorn of its S&M sequences, "The Whip and the Body"
was released in the U.S. with the appropriate title "What."

Daliah Lavi's first American film was 1962's "Two Weeks in Another Town," a lush melodrama about a troubled movie production, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Lavi's childhood mentor, Kirk Douglas. Filmed in Rome, the glossy soap opera, produced by John Houseman and based on the novel by Irwin Shaw (best known as the author of Rich Man, Poor Man), costarred Edward G. Robinson, Cyd Charisse, Claire Trevor, and George Hamilton.

Kirk Douglas bids ingénue Daliah Lavi arrivederci
in a scene from "Two Weeks in Another Town."

Daliah Lavi landed the plum role of The Girl in screenwriter-director Richard Brooks' lavish 1965 adaptation of Lord Jim, a novel written in 1900 by Joseph Conrad (whose 1899 book Heart of Darkness inspired the 1979 motion picture "Apocalypse Now"). The epic two-and-a-half-hour saga starred Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Eli Wallach, Curt Jurgens, Jack Hawkins, Paul Lukas, and Akim Tamiroff.

Daliah Lavi and Peter O'Toole relax on an exotic location
for "Lord Jim."

"Lord Jim" was supposed to be Lavi's breakout Hollywood role, but the movie was a box-office disappointment.

Stella Stevens stacks up against Daliah Lavi in "The Silencers."

Undaunted, the actress chose a more lucrative career path of playing scantily dressed femmes fatales in a spat of spy spoofs that sprung up after the success of the early Bond films: "The Silencers" (1966), Dean Martin's first portrayal of author Donald Hamilton's counteragent as a laid-back lounge lizard in a series of low-budget parodies; "The Spy with a Cold Nose" (1966), featuring Laurence Harvey and a pooch with a bugged collar; and 1967's "Casino Royale."

Daliah Lavi plays well-armed and barely dressed
Soviet agent Princess Natasha Romanova in "The Spy
with the Cold Nose."

Having failed to interest either Sean Connery in reprising his star-making role or Eon Productions in cooperating with a faithful adaptation of Fleming's Casino Royale, producer Charles K. Feldman opted for an out-and-out send-up of secret agent flicks, '60s psychedelia, mod subculture, haphazard cinema genres, and seemingly everything but the kitchen sink.

It was only two years earlier that Feldman produced the over-the-top bedroom farce "What's New Pussycat," starring Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole, Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss, original Bond Girl Ursula Andress ("Dr. No"), and Woody Allen.

Better known for his paperback cover depictions of musclebound
sword-and-sorcery heroes and nearly naked temptresses, fantasy
fiction illustrator Frank Frazetta created the poster art for
"What's New Pussycat."

"What's New Pussycat" was, in fact, Woody Allen's first produced screenplay. The title was inspired by an endearment often used by Hollywood playboy Warren Beatty, for whom the movie was originally conceived as a contemporary comedy about a sex addict. As Allen worked on the screenplay, Beatty noticed that Allen's role as the womanizer's neurotic friend continually overshadowed his own, until the star backed out of the production and was replaced by Peter O'Toole. A script doctor subsequently pared Woody's role back down to a minor character, while Peter Sellers and producer Charles K. Feldman added insult to injury by making further changes to the screenplay in favor of Sellers' frenetic portrayal of crazed psychoanalyst Dr. Fassbender.

Most Inspired Comedic Line in "What's New Pussycat":
Caught in an embrace with Ursula Andress by jealous frau Edra Gale,
Peter Sellers blurts, "This is a personal friend of James Bond!"

The threadbare crazy quilt of a "plot" in "Casino Royale" was draped over a bare-boned premise of a convoluted scheme by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH to discredit and destroy the reputation of the retired and comfortably ensconced Sir James Bond, played by David Niven (famously noted as James Bond creator's Ian Fleming's original choice to portray 007 on film).

British Secret Intelligence Service MI-6 head "M" (John Huston), CIA
 honcho William Holden, French intelligence tête Charles Boyer, and
Russian KGB commissar Kurt Kasznar try to coax Sir James Bond
(David Niven) out of his retirement of growing black roses, playing
Debussy on the piano. eating royal jelly, and keeping African lions
on his estate "to save the world" in "Casino Royale."

"Casino Royale" was credited to five directors (including the above-mentioned John Huston), each apparently with their own agenda. For example, Huston, who filmed his scenes in Ireland, took the job to pay off a gambling debt and because he wanted to go fox-hunting in Ireland. In the meantime, six-time Oscar nominee Deborah Kerr, featured in Huston's segment, used her salary to build a pool which she dubbed "The Charles K. Feldman Swimming Pool."

Stunt coordinator Richard Talmadge, who was
the movie's sixth, uncredited director, is pictured
here for a cameo as a Keystone Kop, posing beside
Geraldine Chaplin, daughter of Charlie Chaplin
and mother of "Game of Thrones'" Oona Chaplin.

Besides three credited screenwriters, the following were believed to have, at one point or another, contributed to the script: journalist-playwright Ben Hecht, "Sunset Boulevard" director Billy Wilder, Catch-22 author Joseph Heller, Woody Allen, and Candy author Terry Southern (specifically requested by Peter Sellers to re-write his dialogue in order to outshine costars Woody Allen and Orson Welles).

The scattershot logic in "Casino Royale" found David Niven's aging 007 assigning the "Bond" designation to a variety of agents, male and female, as a ruse to confuse SMERSH operatives. Apart from Niven - sorry to say, an unequivocal bore of a protagonist to anchor the hellzapoppin' antics therein - the tattered rags of any semblance to a plot were loosely laced together by Peter Sellers' presence as baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble (dubbed "James Bond"), who was recruited by Ursula Andress' secret agent Vesper Lynd (aka Vesper Bond) to bankrupt SMERSH embezzler Le Chiffre (Orson Welles). Why? Because it made up a negligible storyline that was inexplicably abandoned two-thirds into the picture, with the blink-of-an-eye demise of Sellers and Welles.

Upon Peter Sellers' first day on the set of "Casino Royale," producer Feldman presented him with a white Rolls-Royce in appreciation of the actor's participation in "What's New Pussycat." In April of 1964, less than two months after marrying the beautiful Swedish actress Britt Ekland, Sellers inhaled amyl nitrites (sometimes called "poppers") as a sexual stimulant in hopes of "the ultimate orgasm." What the 39-year-old actor ended up with was a series of eight heart attacks over a three-hour period.

By the time he was cast in "Casino Royale," Sellers had not only lost weight but was confident he now looked matinee-idol handsome, and, despite the filmmakers' hopes that he would bring his inspired mania and gift for comedic spontaneity to the role, he insisted on playing Evelyn Tremble in a straightforward dramatic fashion. During production, Sellers insisted an elaborate set for a circus scene involving an elephant be torn down because he had a dream in which his dead mother warned him that he would be in danger. Orson Welles, cast as the duplicitous SMERSH paymaster Le Chiffre, found Sellers' prima-donna facade humorous.

Not so amused was Sellers himself. Reportedly, when Queen Elizabeth's sister, Princess Margaret, visited the movie set, the anxious actor, who had met her previously, greeted her in a conspicuously showy fashion, making sure the cast and crew noticed. To his chagrin, the princess walked straight past him to make a big fuss in meeting Orson Welles. Sellers (who had initially suggested Welles for the picture) stormed off the set. Emotionally and physically in dread of Orson's forceful presence, Peter refused to film any more scenes with him, which is why, when viewed now, the two appear together in only one establishing shot during the pivotal baccarat showdown.

Orson Welles demanded on including magic tricks in
his performance, which further irked Peter Sellers.

Joe McGrath, one of the five credited directors and a personal friend of Sellers, dating back to the days of "The Goon Show" in the 1950s, was punched by Peter when he complained about the star's behavior on the set. McGrath left the production and was replaced by Robert Parrish. Producer Charles K. Feldman suffered a heart attack during filming, which he blamed on Sellers. "The only way to make a movie with Peter," Feldman would remark, "is to let him direct, write and produce it as well as star in it." Sadly, little more than a year after the picture's release, Feldman succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 63.

According to yet another director, Val Guest, Sellers' escalating petulance became such a problem that the decision was made to fire him before he finished all his scenes. A bagpipe marching band sequence, which featured a cameo by Peter O'Toole, was noticeably altered, and Sellers' character was unceremoniously killed off.

Peter O'Toole: "Excuse me, are you Richard Burton?" Peter Sellers:
"No, I'm Peter O'Toole!" O'Toole: "Then you're the finest man that
ever breathed." O'Toole's fee for his cameo was a case of champagne.

The previously mentioned Val Guest was the director burdened with the thankless task of trying to make sense out of the cinematic jigsaw puzzle, including shooting new footage of British actor Terence Cooper as "Coop," yet another "James Bond," who was cast to cover for Sellers' absence.

Terence Cooper meets Daliah Lavi in "Casino Royale."

A number of fans and critics noted that Terence Cooper could have been a more than adequate successor to Sean Connery's James Bond. Cooper, whose acting career never really took off as it should have, found more rewards as a restauranteur in Auckland, New Zealand, and as an accomplished water color painter of Australian rain forests and tropical birdlife.

Speaking of birdlife, as a karate expert in "Casino Royale," Coop
(007) is trained to ignore the advances of beautiful women, including
an obvious homage to Ursula Andress' shell-collecting Honey Ryder
(center), the screen's first Bond Girl from "Dr. No."

Brooding silently on the sidelines during the off-camera drama and delays was Woody Allen, who was cast as David Niven's errant nephew, Jimmy Bond, revealed as evil SMERSH mastermind Dr. Noah. From the onset, Allen was not endeared of Charles K. Feldman after what the producer allowed to happen to his "What's New Pussycat" script. Cooling his heels in a London hotel while waiting for his "Casino Royale" scenes to be filmed, he managed to write the play "Don't Drink the Water" and the screenplay for "Take the Money and Run." At one point, he grew so frustrated that he abruptly flew back to New York City in costume.

Abducted by Dr. Noah (Woody Allen), The Detainer (Daliah Lavi)
asks, "Do you treat all the girls you desire this way?" "Oh, yes,"
he replies, "I undress them and tie them up. I learned that
in the Boy Scouts."

Woody Allen's scenes in the finished film are undoubtedly the funniest and most inspired, which was no surprise since he largely rewrote his part, although he told Feldman he didn't want any screen credit.

"Afterwards we can run amok. If you're
too tired, we can walk amok."

The chaotic production convinced Allen to direct his own pictures. "I never bothered to see 'Casino Royale,'" he later commented. "I knew it would be horrible. The set was a madhouse."

A madhouse? What's mad about a comedy that featured the screen
debut of David Prowse (the man inside the Darth Vader costume in
the original "Star Wars" trilogy) as Frankenstein's Monster? In fact,
the 6'3" actor later portrayed the creature in "The Horror of
Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell."

"I knew then that the only way to make a film is to control it completely," Woody Allen recalled.

Woody Allen waits patiently while director Val Guest
gives Daliah Lavi her motivation in "Casino Royale."

Allen admitted at one time, "The film will probably make a mint. Not money, but a single peppermint." Surprisingly, "Casino Royale," released two months before Eon Productions' "You Only Live Twice" (which had a budget of $10 million), made money, becoming the 13th highest grossing film of 1967. Orson Welles attributed the success of the movie to the marketing strategy that featured the silhouette of a naked woman on the posters.

Acclaimed illustrator Robert McGinnis, who created the iconic image of the colorful silhouette, was a onetime apprentice at Walt Disney Studios who painted more than 1200 paperback book covers and over 40 movie posters, beginning with 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's." He crafted the posters for the 007 films "Thunderball," "Diamonds Are Forever," "Live and Let Die," "The Man with the Golden Gum," and, ironically, "Casino Royale's" box-office rival, "You Only Live Twice" (pictured below).

Beyond the sexy poster, no small part of the success and enduring popularity of "Casino Royale" has to be the timelessly appealing earworm of a theme, composed by Burt Bacharach and performed by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. The picture's sultry (but painfully out-of-place in context) love song, "The Look of Love," sung by British pop star Dusty Springifeld, was Oscar-nominated but laughably lost to (really?!) "Talk to the Animals" from the screen embarrassment "Doctor Dolittle."

After "Casino Royale," Daliah Lavi's screen career was sporadic at best. She had a supporting role in 1967's "Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon," an extravagant British period-piece comedy starring Troy Donahue, with Burl Ives as P.T. Barnum (pictured above), that was released in the U.S. as "Those Fantastic Flying Fools" to cash in on the box-office success of 1965's "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines." Likewise, a 1969 British comedy called "Monte Carlo or Bust!" starring Tony Curtis was retitled "Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies." Interestingly, all three comedies featured Gert ("Goldfinger") Fröbe as a parody of a puffed-up Austrian ass.

Lavi portrayed a deadly baroness in "Some Girls Do," the second in a late '60s attempt to turn Bulldog Drummond, a policeman-adventurer popularized in 1920s fiction, into a 007-like character; the attempt didn't gel.

British actor Richard Johnson ("Dr. No" director Terence Young's
initial choice to play James Bond) strikes a Sean Connery-like pose
in "Some Girls Do," flanked by Daliah Lavi and Beba Lončar.

Daliah Lavi's final feature film role was as a "frontier hellcat" named Rosita in 1971's "Catlow," a lighthearted western (based on a Louis L'Amour novel) featuring a rare comedic performance by Yul Brynner as a fast-and-loose outlaw. The tongue-in-cheek horse opera costarred Richard Crenna, Jo Ann Pflug (best known as "Dish" in the 1970 film "MASH"), and, in a rare turn as a villainous bounty hunter, Leonard Nimoy. (In his autobiographies, Leonard Nimoy mentioned that his experience on the film, which gave him the welcome opportunity to break away from his Spock persona on "Star Trek," was one of the happiest of his life.)

Daliah Lavi helps Leonard Nimoy prepare for his full-frontal nude
tussle with Richard Crenna - yes, it really happened - in "Catlow."

In the 1970s, Daliah Lavi, who was fluent in German, French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as Hebrew and English, was "discovered" by Jimmy Bowien, a German record producer noted as one of the earliest music executives to take an interest in The Beatles. She reinvented herself as a successful performer of German schlager songs, a genre of pop music with catchy, often sentimental lyrics. Rapidly rising as one of the most popular schlager singers in Germany, she recorded the hits "Oh Wann Kommst Du?" ("Oh, When Will You Come?") and "Willst Du Mit Mir Geh'n?" ("Do You Want to Go with Me?").

Perhaps ironically in hindsight, before "Lord Jim" premiered in 1965, Daliah Lavi (pictured below, with Eli Wallach as the bandit general) said, "I like acting and it pays well, and they say one day I will become a big star. But I don't really care about my acting career. I'd rather be a dancer."