Rick’s aah
AS ROMANTIC BLOCKBUSTER TURNS 80..
★ IT has been voted the most romantic film of all time… and now Casablanca is celebrating its 80th birthday. The movie, starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, had its premiere in New York on November 26, 1942.
★ But how much do you know about it? Here, JAMES MOORE reveals 15 facts about the silver screen classic…
1
Casablanca was based on an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Filmmakers paid more than £16,000 for it – a record.
2
It tells the story of world-weary American Rick Blaine, who runs a bar in the Moroccan city. He has to decide whether to help former lover Ilsa Lund and her French resistance fighter husband Victor Laszlo escape the Nazis.
3
Made during the height of World War Two, the film was entirely shot in California. Because of restrictions on nighttime airport filming, a cardboard plane was used for the famous final scene.
4
Bogart, who played Rick, was two inches shorter than Bergman as Ilsa. Director Michael Curtiz made him stand on blocks for their scenes.
5
Bogart’s wife Mayo Methot thought he was having an affair with Bergman. In fact, they barely spoke off set.
6
It’s the most quoted movie, with lines such as: “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” and “I think this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
7
But “Play it again, Sam” isn’t one of them, though Ilsa does say: “Play it, Sam.” The commonly misquoted line is the name of a Bogart-themed 1972 Woody Allen movie.
8
Paul Henreid, who played Laszlo, refused to be in it with Bogart and Bergman unless he got equal billing.
9
British-born Claude Rains, who played French police chief Louis Renault, had been injured during World War One.
10
Many of the actors who played minor roles were Jews who really had escaped the Third Reich. Anti-Nazi German refugee Conrad Veidt played villainous Major Heinrich Strasser.
11
The film was rushed out after the Allies invaded North Africa in November 1942. Casablanca itself had been liberated that month and British PM Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt soon met there for a summit.
12
The film’s famous song As Time Goes By, sung by Dooley Wilson, nearly didn’t get included. It later became a huge hit covered by many stars. 13
Jazz drummer Wilson, who played Sam, actually faked playing the film’s piano which sold at auction in 2014 for more than £2million.
14
A 1983 TV spin-off starred Starsky & Hutch’s David Soul as Rick Blaine. It flopped.
15
Casablanca won an Oscar for best picture. A sequel called Brazzaville was mooted, but never made. There has never been a remake either, despite efforts by superfan Madonna in the 00s.