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Casablanca—by a wide margin, my favorite movie of all time—turns 70 this year, and it hasn’t lost a step. (It was supposed to come out in 1943, but when the Allies invaded French North Africa in November of ’42, Jack Warner rushed the film out immediately, in order to take advantage of the free publicity.)
To celebrate the anniversary, Turner Classic Movies got together with Warner Home Video and Fathom Events and on 21 March, showed the digitally-restored classic in over 500 theaters across the nation…and if you know me at all, you also know I was in one of those theaters when it happened. In the American Film Institute’s 2007 list of the 100 greatest movies of all time, Casablanca ranks “only” third, behind Citizen Kane and The Godfather—which I don’t really have a problem with—but for me, it’s still the best!
Originally, I had intended to do an entire post about the film, but it’s all been said before, hasn’t it? So in lieu of my usual incisive commentary, I’ve decided to let the audience play along this time, by creating a short (7-question; one for every ten years) fun quiz* about Casablanca and the people who made it what it was…and still is. At the end, scroll down a few line feeds to see the answers. And thank you for stopping by to take a look. As always, I’m delighted to have you here, and would love to hear your comments.
*My primary source is Aljean Harmetz’s wonderful and meticulously-researched book, The Making Of Casablanca (formerly released as Round Up The Usual Suspects). Here goes:
A. Casablanca probably has more “money lines” than any film in history. In another of the American Film Institutes many lists, AFI’s 100 YEARS…100 MOVIE QUOTES, no fewer than six of those lines made the top 100. Which one ranked the highest (at #5)?
- “We’ll always have Paris.”
- “Round up the usual suspects.”
- None of the above
B. Which actor’s name is the one he was born with?
- Humphrey Bogart
- Peter Lorre
- None of the above
C. Dooley Wilson played the role of Sam, the piano player at Rick’s Cafe Americain. But things weren’t always as they seemed to be in Casablanca. Which part, if any, of Wilson’s performance was dubbed in?
- His singing
- His piano playing
- None of the above
D. Who was the highest-paid actor in the cast, at $5,000 a week? (It wasn’t Bogart!)
- Ingrid Bergman
- Sidney Greenstreet
- None of the above
E. What song were the Nazis singing in Rick’s before Victor Laszlo (with Rick’s tacit approval) led the band and the rest of the clientele in a stirring rendition of La Marseillaise that completely drowned out the Germans?
- Die Wacht am Rhein (Watch On The Rhein)
- Horst Wessel
- None of the above
F. Which cast member got his first movie role in 1933 literally sight unseen, i.e., on the strength of his voice alone?
- Conrad Veidt
- Claude Rains
- None of the above
G. According to Ingrid Bergman’s first husband, she always did her best work when she was in love with her co-star (this was not the case with Bogart in Casablanca), at least for the duration of the job. Which actor later said of her, “In my whole life I’ve never had a woman so much in love with me as Ingrid Bergman was. The day after the picture ended I couldn’t get her on the phone”?
- Clark Gable
- Cary Grant
- None of the above
STOP! Pencils down!
Now, scroll down a bit for the answers…
A. 3. None of the above. The correct answer is “Here’s looking at you, kid.” During breaks, Ingrid Bergman would play poker with other cast members. Since she was still learning English, Bogart would occasionally watch the game, and he added “Here’s looking at you” to her poker repertoire. “We’ll always have Paris” finished 43d, and “Round up the usual suspects,” 32d. See the link in the question, above, for the entire list.
B. 1. Humphrey Bogart. Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born with that very name on Christmas Day, 1899, in New York City. Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in 1904, in what is now Slovakia.
C. 2. His piano playing. Wilson was, among other things, a singer and professional drummer, but he couldn’t play the piano. Elliot Carpenter sat behind a curtain and provided the music, positioning himself so Wilson could watch his hands and (approximately) mimic his movements.
D. 3. None of the above. Conrad Veidt, as the Nazi Major Strasser, got $25,000 for his five weeks on the set. Like so many German actors of the time, he got out of his home country one step ahead of the real Nazis, only to find himself playing that role more often than not. His contract stated that he did this in order to help the British war effort and indeed, he donated a great deal of money to the cause. (He died in April of 1943, only a few months after Casablanca’s premiere in January.)
E. 1. Die Wacht am Rhein. Interestingly, the song was out of favor with the Nazi hierarchy at the time: Strasser and his cronies would be unlikely to sing it in real life. The Horst-Wessel-Lied would have made more sense; however, it was under German copyright then. No big deal to the Allies, of course—what were they going to do, sue us?—but it might have adversely affected the film’s revenue in countries that were still neutral at the time.
F. 2. Claude Rains. In 1933, theater actor Rains went to Hollywood for a screen test. It flopped miserably, and he went back to Broadway. Weeks later, while his test was being run next door, director James Whale heard his voice and said, “I don’t care what he looks like. That’s the man I want.”…for the movie The Invisible Man. Of course!
G. 3. None of the above. The actor was Gary Cooper, and the film was Saratoga Trunk (1945).
Epic fail:( I found your blog through Kirsten’s Hopscotch post today *waves* ~Cheers!
Hi, Jamie! I thought you looked familiar! Any friend of Kirsten’s is always more than welcome…and fellow Kreative Blog Award nominees, doubly so.
I very much appreciate your dropping in and trying your luck. Don’t tell the others, but until just recently, even I would have missed three of those questions…and I’ve screened the film maybe fifty times. (“Screened” sounds better than saying I just sat and watched it that often—it suggests that I am a serious student and not just a rank sentimentalist, as Rains accused Bogart of being.)
Thanks again! Come and see us any time…
What a great post!
I didn’t do so hot on the questionnaire, which gives me the perfect excuse to rent this one and watch it again doesn’t it?
I miss movies that rely on characters and story instead of special effects or worse, crude language or situations, to get me interested. It is good to remember where movies started out, and that in the end the same emotions play as well now as they did then.
Seventy years already? Where did the time go?
Thank you, Kirsten! It’s always great to hear from you.
I’m glad you enjoyed the quiz…and that you’ve found an excuse to go out and rent the movie: there’s a lot worse things you could do with your time and money, that’s for sure.
Thanks, too, for your remarks on characters and story. I had originally intended to write a regular post to this effect, but you—and Julia and Tammy before you—have driven the point home more eloquently than I could have done. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just start putting out a quiz every month and leave the heavy lifting to you guys. (Or maybe not: wouldn’t be fair, I suppose…)
ps—Even though I don’t always reply, I never miss an entry of “Write A Book With Me”, and more often than not, find something there I can use in my own writing. So thank you for that as well!
LOVED this post. What fun! Now, if this were about “It’s a Wonderful Life” I would have aced this puppy, but sadly I didn’t fare very well. I thought the most notable line was “Of all the gin joints in all the world, why does she have to walk into mine?” Yup…wrong again. I actually got 3 of them correct, so we will concentrate on the positive. An incredible movie and you are indeed a lucky duck for having been able to view the newly revised copy on the big screen. I urge my 26 year old daughter to watch Casablanca, The Heiress, Citizen Cane and a few other prime classics, but the interest level is low. Its black and white and no special effects. Ho-Hum. Perhaps in time. They simply don’t make them like this anymore; where movies are dependent on plot, dialogue, acting and story. Too bad. We are the worse for it. Thanks for sharing!
Hi, Tammy! Many thanks for dropping by…and also for the kind words! (Bogart’s “gin joints” line checked in at #67, in between Charlton Heston remonstrating with monkeys and Jack Nicholson’s version of “Honey, I’m home” in The Shining. It could easily have been higher—hell, the AFI could have made a Top 100 list just from Casablanca alone.)
You make the excellent point that Casablanca succeeds without having to resort to the myriad gimmicks that so often take the place of proper film-making these days. Indeed, it succeeded almost in spite of the few special effects it did use. They were almost laughably bad, even for that era: the toy airplane in the opening scene that comes in on a 45-degree glide path and the searchlight periodically piercing the darkened streets—what were they looking for?—are two that spring to mind.
Not to mention the cheesy “letters of transit” gimmick. (“Oh, Herr Laszlo, you have a letter of transit? My mistake. Please feel free to fly off and continue your fight against us unhindered.” Not bloody likely.) But none of that stuff matters, not as long as you tell a good story, with clearly-defined protagonists and antagonists whose opposing goals put them in conflict with each other, and arrive at a logical but unexpected conclusion. It’s just as simple as that, isn’t it?
Thanks again. Drop by any time!
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore! You’ve made me so envious, what a fantastic experience to see the movie as it should be seen – up there on the big silver screen. Oh and by the way, I got all the answers correct which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s a regular correspondent with your question master:)
For the record, “Here’s looking at you kid” might be the biggest money line in the film, but my favourite quote is “We’ll always have Paris.” I well up everytime.
Now I’ve a question for you – do you believe those rumours that somewhere out there is an alternative ending?
Julia
Thank you, Julia…and well done on getting all the right answers! (That’s never happened before—I’ll have to do better next time…)
I haven’t heard about an alternate ending; they had so much trouble coming up with the real one that I suspect they let it go at that. One of the things that irritated Bergman is she didn’t know, right up to the end of shooting, whether she was going to go away with Bogart or Henreid (and so didn’t know how she was supposed to be acting in the run-up to the final scene at the airport). Personally, I hope there isn’t another ending out there somewhere…or if there is, that Warner’s smart enough to keep it locked safely away somewhere. I like Casablanca just the way it is!