French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1990, no. 6224. Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
German postcard by Pwc-Verlag, München (Munich) from the Prestel-book 'Fashion in Film. Claude Rains, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Henreid and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). Caption: Costumes by Orri-Kelly.
Vintage postcard. Sydney Greenstreet and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
The beginning of a beautiful friendship
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) was based on an unproduced stage play, 'Everybody Comes to Rick's', written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Burnett, an American Jew, inherited a considerable sum of money from an uncle in 1938 and decided to use it to visit his wife's family in Europe. In the summer of that year, the couple travelled to Antwerp. Once there, the young American was asked to go to Vienna to help his family. After the Anschluss, Viennese Jews were forbidden to take valuable possessions with them if they wanted to leave the country. At the American consulate, he was strongly advised against this since he himself was also Jewish. Burnett was given a pin with the Stars and Stripes and urged not to set foot on the streets of Austria without wearing that symbol visibly. In Vienna, he was horrified to see how the Nazis were discriminating against and humiliating Jews. The Burnetts managed to smuggle a large quantity of valuables out of the country by carrying them on their bodies. Frances, Murray's wife, wore a fur coat in the middle of summer, and Murray wore expensive rings on every finger.
Later, he visited a nightclub in the south of France, where he encountered not only an African-American pianist, but also visitors of various nationalities. He incorporated his experiences into the play. The character Ilsa was then still called Lois Meredith. Lois meets Laszlo after her affair with Rick in Paris. At this point, Rick is not yet a nightclub owner but a lawyer. The script circulated among various studios, and opinions about its quality varied. Film analyst Stephen Karnot of Warner Bros. called it ‘intellectual pretentiousness’. Samuel Marx of MGM offered the writers $5,000, but was overruled by his boss, Louis B. Mayer. Despite Karnot's negative opinion, Warner Bros. bought the rights anyway. Jack Warner was persuaded by Irene Lee of the screenplay department to buy the rights for $20,000 in January 1942. That was the highest amount paid for the rights to a play that had not yet been produced.
Æneas MacKenzie and Wally Kline wrote the first version of the script. After six weeks, they disappeared, and the twins Julius and Philip Epstein took over. They were responsible for fleshing out the character of Renault and Rick's background. To make it plausible that Rick had retreated to Casablanca and had not reported for duty in the American army, they set the events before the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. They also changed Rick's background. He was no longer a lawyer, but a nightclub owner with a vague past. The reason why Rick cannot return to the US is not made clear in the film. The Epsteins admitted that they could not come up with a reason either, so in the end, they deliberately kept the reason vague. The brothers were also responsible for adding more comical elements. After a while, Howard Koch was brought in as an additional writer. He also wrote the screenplay, but separately from the Epsteins. He added more political and melodramatic elements. Casey Robinson and Lenore J. Coffee were hired for a few weeks to rewrite the different versions. Robinson also assisted in writing a number of scenes between Ilsa and Rick in the nightclub. Robinson and Coffee are not credited in the film, however. One of the things that the screenwriters copied wholesale from the play is the Vichy France transit papers, which play such an important role. In reality, these papers did not exist at all.
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) is set in December 1941 in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, which is controlled by the Vichy government of France. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a famous nightclub with a casino here: 'Rick's Café Américain'. The nightclub attracts a varied clientele, including Vichy French and German officials, refugees desperate to reach the still-neutral United States, and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, he ran guns to Ethiopia in 1935 and fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. One day, a petty crook, Ugarte (Peter Lorre), enters Rick's with travel documents that allow the bearer to travel freely around German-occupied Europe and to neutral Portugal. He gives the papers, obtained by murdering two German couriers, to Rick for safekeeping. Ugarte is then arrested by police commander Louis Renault (Claude Rains) and dies in his cell. No one now knows that Rick has the valuable documents. Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) then appear in the café. Ilsa sees Rick's friend and house pianist Sam (Dooley Wilson) and asks him to play ‘As Time Goes By’. Rick storms over to him, furious that Sam has ignored his order never to play that song again, and is then stunned to see Ilsa again. Ilsa is Rick's former lover from Paris, and Victor is a Czechoslovak resistance leader on the run. They desperately need these papers to flee to neutral Portugal and then to the United States.
German Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt) knows about the plan and comes to the café to prevent the transfer, making clear arrangements with police chief Louis Renault. The latter then closes the popular nightclub for two weeks due to illegal gambling. Rick now finds himself in conflict: he can give Victor and Ilsa the papers so that they can flee, he can seduce Ilsa and persuade her to leave for America with him, or he can sell the papers for a lot of money. Rick must choose between love and duty. When the café is empty, Ilsa demands the papers at gunpoint. Rick denies having them, and Ilsa does not dare to shoot. She then confesses that she is still in love with him. She explains that when they met and fell in love in Paris, she believed her husband had been killed while attempting to escape from a concentration camp. When she learned that Laszlo was alive and in hiding, she left Rick without explanation to nurse her sick husband. Rick sells his nightclub to Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), an underworld figure and Rick's friendly business rival, and withdraws his plan. Victor is then arrested by police commander Renault. However, Rick manages to persuade Renault to release Victor for the time being, so that he can be arrested later for possession of the travel documents. When Victor has the papers, and Renault wants to arrest him again, Rick manages to prevent this by threatening him with a gun. The four of them drive to the airport. When Major Heinrich Strasser appears at the airport, Rick shoots him dead. As Ilsa and Victor's plane departs, Louis shows another side of himself. He suggests to Rick that they leave for Brazzaville together to join the French resistance there. As they walk away into the fog, Rick says, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
French postcard in the Collection Cinema by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, 1994, no. CA 86. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
Chinese postcard. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 136-32. Photo: The Ludlow Collection. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
American postcard by Ludlow Sales, New York, NY, no. FC-91. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.
Here's looking at you, kid
Woody Allen paid tribute to Casablanca in Play It Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972) which he also wrote, based on his own 1969 Broadway play of the same name. Allen played a recently divorced film critic, Allan Felix, who identifies with the film Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) and the character Rick Blaine. ’Play it again, Sam' became the most famous quote from the film. However, these words are never said in the film. Ilsa says to pianist Sam: "Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake". Rick later says, "You played it for her, you can play it for me. Play it!" But nowhere does anyone say, "Play it again, Sam". Six quotes from the film were added to the American Film Institute's top 100 film quotes. This is the highest number of quotes from a single film. The quotes are: "Here's looking at you, kid", "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship", "I stick my neck out for nobody", "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine", "Round up the usual suspects" and "We'll always have Paris". The line "Here's looking at you, kid", said four times in the film, comes from Bogart himself. He had used it before in films. Rumour has it that he often said the phrase to Ingrid Bergman as she played poker with her English coach and hairdresser between takes. The music was written by Max Steiner, but the song 'As Time Goes By' by Herman Hupfeld had been part of the story from the original play. The song enjoyed a resurgence after the release of Casablanca, spending 21 weeks on the hit parade.
Humphrey Bogart was producer Hal B. Wallis' logical choice for the role of Rick. Earlier, Jack Warner had offered the role to George Raft, but he had declined. When Wallis chose Bogart, Raft became interested in the role after all and tried to persuade Jack Warner to choose him. However, Warner stood by his producer, and the role went to Bogart. There were no other candidates. Joan Alison, one of the writers of 'Everybody Comes to Rick's', disagreed with the choice of Bogart, whom she considered a drunkard. She would have preferred Clark Gable. Ingrid Bergman was also the first choice for the role of Ilsa from the outset. Unlike Bogart, she did have competition. Actresses Edwige Feuillère, Michèle Morgan and Tamara Toumanova were also in the running for the role. Bergman was under contract with producer David O. Selznick, who was preparing her for the lead role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943), which was to be released in 1943. Hal B. Wallis sent the Epstein brothers to Selznick to persuade him to loan Bergman. Selznick agreed when he was given an explanation of the script. What probably helped was that Warner Bros. loaned Olivia de Havilland to Selznick.
Many of the extras and actors who played Germans in the film were German Jews who had fled Germany or Germans who opposed the Nazi regime. Conrad Veidt, who played Major Heinrich Strasser, was also anti-Nazi. He had to flee Germany in the 1930s because the SS wanted to kill him. For his role in the film, he was paid £25,000 for five weeks of filming. This made him the highest-paid actor in Casablanca. Ferrari and Ugarte were played by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, a duo who would later become known as ‘Little Pete-Big Syd’. Lorre had previously worked with Bogart and Greenstreet, and Koch had great confidence in his acting skills. He regretted that Lorre's role was so small. The role of pianist Sam was played by drummer Dooley Wilson. Wilson could not play the piano, so he imitated the hand movements of pianist Elliot Carpenter. Since the music was recorded at the same time as the film was shot, Carpenter was hidden behind a curtain, but in such a way that Wilson could see him. Incidentally, it was a close call whether the role of Sam would have been played by a woman. Producer Wallis considered hiring Hazel Scott, Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald.
Almost all of the scenes were shot at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where Rick's café was recreated. The set designers based the décor on the real Hotel El Minzah in Tangier. This was the only set that was built especially for the film. All other sets, such as the streets of Casablanca and Paris, were existing sets for the film The Desert Song (Robert Florey, 1943) that were adapted. For the train station in Paris, a set from the film Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942) was used. The reason for the reuse was a construction freeze imposed by the government in connection with the war. Some stock footage was used for the scenes set in Paris. The final scene of the film, where Rick, Ilsa and Laszlo board the plane, is famous for the fog, which gives the scene the right atmosphere. However, the fog was a trick to conceal the fact that the plane, a Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, was actually a smaller cardboard replica. Lilliputians were used to give the illusion that the plane was larger than it actually was. The only scene shot outside the studio was Major Strasser's arrival at the airport. This was done at what was then called Metropolitan Airport, now known as Van Nuys Airport, near Los Angeles. When filming had ended and post-production was underway, American troops landed in North Africa. On 8 November 1942, Casablanca was captured. The film itself would not premiere until the spring of 1943. There was a brief attempt to mention the invasion in the film, but the studio bosses did not think this was a good idea. A preview screening showed that the film was so well put together that no changes were necessary.
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) received good reviews and was a substantial, but not spectacular, box-office success. In the decades since its release, the film has grown in reputation. Casablanca has remained popular ever since and ranks high in IMDb's top 250. Film critics praise the charismatic acting of Bogart and Bergman, who work exceptionally well together, the deep characterisation, the skilful direction, the witty dialogue and the emotional impact of the work as a whole. The film was nominated for eight Oscars in 1943, winning three: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay based on a novel. The film poster was created by American graphic designer Bill Gold in 1942, when he was still working for Warner Bros. in New York. The poster was initially rejected because it was not provocative enough, so he depicted the main character with a gun in his hand. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected the film as one of the first for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Roger Ebert: "Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it. The black-and-white cinematography has not aged as color would. The dialogue is so spare and cynical that it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of Casablanca is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans."
American postcard by Ludlow Sales, New York, NY, no. FC-128-50. Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
French postcard by Sonis, no. B. 15. Photo: Warner Bros Pictures. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
American A poster by Warner Bros for Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). Design: Bill Gold.
Dutch poster postcard by Eye Filmmuseum for the Dutch re-release of Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). French poster by Warner Bros.
Sources: Roger Ebert (RogerEbert.com), Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.