The 1954 Climax! episode "Casino Royale" was the first-ever screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, made long before Eon Productions acquired the film rights to the character. It starred Barry Nelson as an American agent named "Jimmy Bond" and Peter Lorre as villain Le Chiffre.

This early Bond adaptation is preserved as a bonus feature on the MGM DVD release of the 1967 film version of Casino Royale.

In an earlier Climax! episode adapting Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, actor Tristram Coffin, who was playing a dead body, stood up on camera and walked off the set, an incident widely reported by the media at the time.

The Tristram Coffin incident later morphed into an urban legend that falsely attributed the mishap to Peter Lorre during the Casino Royale episode.

In February 1955, producer Martin Manulis replaced Bretaigne Windust, and Variety reported this came with a format change, since sponsor Chrysler was unhappy with the show's "restrictive suspense-horror formula" and wanted future episodes to emphasize adventure and emotional climaxes instead of stark melodrama.

Climax! was one of the few CBS programs of its era broadcast in color, using the massive TK-40A color cameras made by RCA, equipment that was primarily used by CBS's rival network NBC.

Although the series was broadcast in color, only black-and-white kinescope copies of some episodes survive today, and only two episodes have ever been released on DVD: the Casino Royale adaptation and Gore Vidal's adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Michael Rennie, Cedric Hardwicke and Lowell Gilmore.