Producer of 1954 Casino Royale TV special dies

Pioneer television producer Martin Manulis, best known as the producer and sometimes director of Playhouse 90, an anthology of live dramas that aired in the late 1950s, died in Los Angeles Friday at the age of 92 - reports Contact Music.

The series helped define CBS as the Tiffany Network in its early days. Several of its original plays were adapted for the screen. Manulis himself produced one such adaptation, The Days of Wine and Roses, which starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.

In 1954, he produced Casino Royale, the only James Bond novel ever to be adapted for live television. In 1985 he produced the 13-part miniseries, James A. Michener's Space, which covered the U.S. space program from the end of WWII to the manned landing on the moon in 1969.

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