Devastating behind the scenes secrets of movie classic | UK News

Widely thought-about to be one of the best movies of all time, the Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman starrer Casablanca launched in theatres 83 years in the past today, January 23.

The evergreen 1943 classic directed by Michael Curtiz is often dubbed as the ‘most quoted movie of all time’ and it comes as no shock.

With a screenplay tailored from Murray Burnett and Joan Alison’s unproduced stage play Everybody Comes to Rick’s, the movie is overflowing with quotable quotes.

The movie, set against the backdrop of the Second World War, centres around Rick Blaine, the proprietor of a nightclub in Casablanca, who discovers that his previous flame Ilsa is in city with her husband, Czechoslovak resistance chief Victor.

Starring Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson alongside Bogart and Bergman, Casablanca is a movie for the ages.

Over the a long time, a lot has been written and revealed about this 102-minute long cinematic gem, but there are some behind the scenes secrets that most people are unaware of.

Interestingly, there was a high risk Casablanca could not have even been named as such, because playwrights Burnett and Alison initially set their story in Lisbon, Portugal. However Warner Bros producer Hal Wallis most well-liked the sultry Moroccan metropolis over its European coastal counterpart, and thus, Casablanca was born.

Devastatingly, a number of of the actors in Casablanca had themselves suffered at the fingers of the Second World War, with many of them having confronted first-hand experiences of Nazi brutality and the penalties of battle.

SZ Sakall, who performed the position of Carl the waiter in the movie, was a Jewish-Hungarian who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and tragically misplaced three of his sisters to a focus camp.

Portraying a pickpocket in Casablanca, Curt Bois, was a German-Jewish actor and refugee, while Helmut Dantine, who took on the position of the Bulgarian roulette participant in the movie, had himself spent time in a focus camp and fled Europe after attaining freedom.

Conrad Veidt, portraying the position of Major Heinrich Strasser, was a German actor and refugee who had managed to flee from the Nazis, but he was continuously forged as a Nazi in American motion pictures. Michael Curtiz, Casablanca’s director himself, was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant who had arrived in the US in 1926, and a few of his members of the family have been refugees from Nazi Europe.

While filmmaker Curtiz can take credit for helming most of the award-winning movie, the movie’s opening montage was truly shot by another director, Don Siegel, who went on to helm blockbuster classics of his own such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Dirty Harry (1971).

It’d be exhausting to discover somebody who has watched Casablanca and not adored the character of Sam, Rick’s best good friend and in-house pianist of the membership. Portrayed to perfection by actor Dooley Wilson, in actuality, Dooley was a skilled drummer and singer, and faked enjoying the piano in the movie. Instead, pianist Elliot Carpenter was enjoying the instrument, hidden behind a curtain.

“Here’s looking at you, kid.” We’ve all heard it a million occasions, but surprisingly, this iconic Humphrey Bogart line wasn’t even a half of the movie’s unique script. In fact, it was totally improvised on the spot by Bogart, who had beforehand used a comparable iteration of the dialogue in his 1934 movie Midnight — and also allegedly said it to Bergman while they have been hanging out on set and he was educating her how to play poker.

It was no secret that Bogart was on the shorter aspect, coming in at a respectable 5 toes 9 inches, whereas Bergman herself was barely taller. Throughout the filming, Bogart reportedly stood on containers and sat on pillows in order to seem taller than his co-star in their scenes together.

As if Casablanca’s full big screen domination wasn’t enough, administrators also took a stab at adapting it for tv, with two short-lived Casablanca TV sequence having seen the mild of day in 1955 and then again in 1983. The latter starred David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame, and although 5 episodes of the show have been filmed, the project bought cancelled after merely two episodes.

Casablanca is accessible to stream for free on BBC iPlayer until 3.25pm on Tuesday, January 27 and could be rented on Prime Video.

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