98 Fun Facts About Casablanca

Who plays nightclub owner Rick Blaine in Casablanca?

Humphrey Bogart. George Raft later said he had turned the role down, but studio memos show Raft asked for it and was refused; the producer wanted Bogart all along.

Which Swedish actress plays Ilsa Lund in Casablanca?

Ingrid Bergman. She was under contract to David O. Selznick, and the producer got her only by lending him Olivia de Havilland in exchange.

Which song does Ilsa ask Sam to play when she first walks into Rick's café in Casablanca?

As Time Goes By. Herman Hupfeld wrote it for a 1931 Broadway show, and the film turned the old tune into a bigger hit than it had ever been.

Which famous line associated with Casablanca is never actually spoken in the film?

Play it again, Sam. Ilsa says "Play it once, Sam" and "Play it, Sam"; the misquote stuck anyway, and Woody Allen borrowed it for the title of a 1972 film.

When Casablanca opens in December 1941, Rick's Café Américain stands in which territory?

Vichy French Morocco. France had fallen, but its Vichy government still ran the protectorate, which is why the Nazis in the café must lean on a French police captain.

In Casablanca, which anthem does Victor Laszlo order the house band to play to drown out the German officers?

La Marseillaise. Many of the extras were real refugees from Nazi Europe, and witnesses on the set saw them weeping as they sang.

Which words complete Rick's Casablanca lament, 'Of all the ___ in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine'?

Gin joints. Rick says it drunk at a table after closing time, then makes Sam play the very song he had banned from the café.

In Casablanca, what are the stolen papers that everyone is after called?

Letters of transit. No such documents ever existed: they were invented for the stage play the film is based on, and co-writer Julius Epstein admitted the device was simply made up.

Which Yankee Doodle Dandy director also made Casablanca?

Michael Curtiz. He got the job only after first choice William Wyler proved unavailable; the Hungarian never mastered English, yet was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors.

Casablanca was adapted from an unproduced stage play with what title?

Everybody Comes to Rick's. Its authors sold every right to the story for $20,000, and when they sued decades later to win their characters back, the court ruled against them.

Closing Rick's café in Casablanca on a pretext, Captain Renault declares himself 'shocked, shocked' to find what going on?

Gambling. A croupier promptly hands Renault his winnings, and he pockets them with a thank-you before ordering everybody out.

Which War of the Worlds radio writer shared Casablanca's writing credit with the Epstein twins?

Howard Koch. He and the twins never wrote in the same room: he was hired while they were away in Washington, and in the 1950s Hollywood blacklisted him.

The Epstein twins left the Casablanca script early in 1942 to work on which director's Why We Fight war films?

Frank Capra. The twins went to Washington to write his Army propaganda series, and the Casablanca script was still unfinished when the cameras rolled.

Who plays Captain Louis Renault, Casablanca's cheerfully corrupt prefect of police?

Claude Rains. His Hollywood debut was The Invisible Man, a title role that keeps his face hidden, bandaged or invisible, for almost the whole film.

Which Cabinet of Dr. Caligari star plays Casablanca's Major Strasser?

Conrad Veidt. He had fled Hitler's Germany with his Jewish wife in 1933, and in wartime Hollywood he was cast again and again as a Nazi.

Which Peter Lorre character in Casablanca is arrested after killing two German couriers for the papers?

Ugarte. He dies in police custody without revealing that he left the papers with Rick, which is what puts Rick at the centre of everyone's schemes.

In Casablanca, Sydney Greenstreet's Signor Ferrari runs which rival establishment?

The Blue Parrot. Ferrari opens by offering to buy Rick's café, and Sam along with it, and at the end Rick finally sells him the place.

Dooley Wilson, who plays the pianist Sam in Casablanca, was really a professional on which instrument?

Drums. He could not play a note on the piano, so he mimed at the keyboard while a pianist played off camera.

An early studio press release wrongly announced which actor as a star of Casablanca?

Ronald Reagan. He was already due for Army service and was never a real candidate; the studio's publicists were simply keeping their contract actors' names in print.

Casablanca was filmed almost entirely in which place?

Burbank, California. Even the fog-bound airport farewell was staged on a soundstage; the one trip outside was to Van Nuys Airport, for Major Strasser's arrival.

For Casablanca's foggy final scene, the crew used little people as mechanics beside a scaled-down mock-up of what?

The airplane. It was a small mock-up standing on a studio soundstage, and the little people around it kept it in perspective, so on screen it reads as a full-size airliner.

Resistance leader Victor Laszlo, hunted by the Nazis in Casablanca, comes from which country?

Czechoslovakia. When Laszlo tells Major Strasser he is a Czechoslovakian, the Nazi snaps back that he is now a subject of the German Reich.

Casablanca's premiere was rushed forward to capitalize on which real-world event?

The Allied landings in North Africa. The studio even planned a new final scene showing the invasion; David O. Selznick, shown the film, urged it to leave the ending alone, and it did.

At the end of Casablanca, Ilsa and Victor Laszlo leave for which neutral capital?

Lisbon. Neutral Portugal was the last stop on the refugee trail out of Europe: from its port, the lucky ones could sail on to America.

When Casablanca won Best Picture, which studio boss rushed on stage to accept ahead of producer Hal Wallis?

Jack L. Warner. Wallis, blocked in his row by the mogul's family, could only sit back down; within weeks the furious producer had left the studio.

In Casablanca's closing line, Rick tells Captain Renault 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful' what?

Friendship. None of the credited writers wrote it: producer Hal Wallis supplied the famous last line himself.

At the end of Casablanca, Renault suggests he and Rick join the Free French in which city?

Brazzaville. It was Free France's headquarters in Africa, and early in 1943 the studio announced a sequel named after it, which was never made.

Renault's file on Rick in Casablanca says he ran guns to Ethiopia and fought for the Loyalists in which war?

The Spanish Civil War. Rick shrugs that he was well paid both times; Renault replies that the winning side would have paid him much better, proof that he is a sentimentalist at heart.

Which 1995 neo-noir film indirectly took its title from Renault's order at the end of the film?

The same line was voted number 32 on the AFI's list of the 100 greatest movie quotes.

Which Casablanca line ranks highest among the AFI's 100 movie quotes?

Here's looking at you, kid. It ranks fifth on the list, yet the toast is probably not the screenwriters' work: the film's star is thought to have brought it to the role himself.

Which film topped the AFI's original 100 Movies list, one place above Casablanca?

Citizen Kane. Orson Welles's film had lost Best Picture in its own year, the prize Casablanca went on to win, yet the AFI's voters put Kane first and Casablanca second.

Which institution picked Casablanca for its first National Film Registry class in 1989?

Library of Congress. Congress created the registry in 1988 after an outcry over the colorizing of black-and-white classics, Casablanca among them.

Which media mogul's company colorized Casablanca in 1988, to the outrage of Hollywood's directors?

Ted Turner. He owned the film because he had bought MGM's library of old movies in 1986, and he colorized its black-and-white classics over a storm of protest.

Asked what brought him to Casablanca, Rick blames his health and says he came for what?

The waters. Told that Casablanca is in the desert, Rick deadpans "I was misinformed"; co-writer Julius Epstein called the exchange his favourite scene.

Which Casablanca prop sold for $3.4 million at a New York auction in 2014?

Sam's piano. In the film it does double duty: while Sam performs, Rick slips the stolen travel papers under its lid for safekeeping.

In which country was Casablanca first released with every Nazi cut and Laszlo turned into a Norwegian physicist?

West Germany. The 1952 dubbed cut ran 25 minutes short and made him an atomic scientist fleeing Interpol; Germans did not see the real story until 1975.

Which neutral country banned Casablanca during the war for showing Nazi Germany in a 'sinister light'?

Ireland. The censor judged it unfit for a neutral country, and when it was finally passed in 1945 he cut lines from Rick and Ilsa's love affair instead.

Which Starsky & Hutch star played Rick in a short-lived 1983 NBC series based on Casablanca?

David Soul. A young Ray Liotta was in the cast too, but NBC took the show off the air after only three episodes.

Which star of Algiers did Casablanca's producer want as Ilsa, until MGM refused to lend her?

Hedy Lamarr. MGM would not release her, but she got to play Ilsa after all, in a 1944 radio version opposite Alan Ladd.

Which Austrian actor plays Resistance hero Victor Laszlo in Casablanca?

Paul Henreid. He was reluctant to play the noble husband and agreed only when he was promised equal billing with the two stars.

Casablanca is Morocco's largest city, but which city is the country's capital?

Rabat. It became the administrative capital under the protectorate of 1912, and independent Morocco kept it as the seat of government.

The name Casablanca means 'white house' in which language?

Spanish. Portuguese settlers first called the town Casa Branca; Spanish merchants who traded there later gave it the form that stuck, and the Arabic name means the same.

Which Atlantic-shore landmark, completed in 1993, then had the world's tallest minaret?

The 210-metre minaret is topped by a laser pointed toward Mecca, and the prayer hall was built partly over the ocean.

In Casablanca, a Resistance contact proves his loyalty with a ring bearing which Free French symbol?

The Cross of Lorraine. Berger, posing as a ring seller, lifts the stone to show de Gaulle's emblem underneath, the sign by which Laszlo knows an ally.

What did Roosevelt announce the Allies would demand of the Axis after meeting Churchill in Casablanca in January 1943?

Unconditional surrender. He announced it at the closing press conference; Stalin had been invited too, but stayed away because of the fighting on the Eastern Front.

Which composer of the Gone with the Wind score wrote the music for Casablanca?

Max Steiner. He thought the film's famous song was trash and asked to replace it, but the leading lady had cut her hair for her next role and the scenes could not be reshot.

Which two rival football clubs share Casablanca's Stade Mohammed V?

Raja and Wydad. Their rivalry runs through one man: Père Jégo coached Wydad to its early titles, then left to build up Raja, the club next door.

Which cinematographer, a veteran of The Maltese Falcon and Frankenstein, shot Casablanca?

Particular care went into photographing Ingrid Bergman, mostly from her preferred left side.

Why did Casablanca's director reportedly have Rick's actor stand on blocks for scenes with Ilsa?

His co-star was taller by about two inches, and by her account he stood on blocks or sat on cushions so that Rick could look down at Ilsa.

Which game is Rick shown playing in Casablanca, an idea credited to his actor, a tournament-level player?

Chess was the star's own obsession: during the shoot he played correspondence games with American servicemen, and the FBI intercepted the mail, fearing the notation hid secret messages.

Casablanca's makers set the story just before which attack, so that Rick's refusal to take sides was believable?

Pearl Harbor had not yet pulled the United States into the war, which made an American café owner who refused to take sides believable to audiences in 1942.

Which comedy team parodied Casablanca with the 1946 film A Night in Casablanca, about a doomed hotel manager?

The Marx Brothers cast Groucho as a manager hired to run the Hotel Casablanca only because an escaped Nazi has murdered his three predecessors.

Casablanca's composer could not swap out Sam's ballad because Ilsa's actress had cut her hair for which film?

For Whom the Bell Tolls needed her cropped as the guerrilla María, so the café scenes could not be reshot and the composer built the whole score around a tune he disliked.

Despite its name, the Hollywood Theatre that hosted Casablanca's world premiere in 1942 stood in which city?

New York had the film to itself for weeks: the 1,500-seat Hollywood Theatre took $255,000 over a ten-week run, and the national release waited until January 1943.

Which kind of crook does Curt Bois play in Casablanca, preying on a trusting English couple?

A pickpocket, he lifts an Englishman's wallet while warning him to watch out for thieves; the German actor's career ran for more than 80 years.

On the AFI's list of the 100 top movie songs, Sam's ballad from Casablanca is runner-up to which song?

Over the Rainbow took first place in the 2004 poll, leaving the tune Sam sings for Ilsa in second, one spot ahead of Singin' in the Rain.

Which pop star was reported in 2008 to be pursuing a remake of Casablanca set in modern-day Iraq?

Madonna never got it made, and it joined a sequel that was planned in the 1940s and never produced.

Why was Casablanca, unusually for a Hollywood studio picture, filmed with its scenes in story order?

The script was unfinished: only the first half was ready when the cameras rolled in May 1942, so scenes were shot in sequence as the pages arrived.

In Casablanca's flashback, Rick and Ilsa fall in love in which city shortly before the German army marches in?

Paris falls in June 1940, and Ilsa vanishes on the very day the couple planned to flee together, which is what turns Rick into the bitter man of the café.

Annina Brandel, the young newlywed played by Joy Page in Casablanca, is a refugee from which country?

Bulgaria is home for Annina and her husband Jan; the actress was the studio boss's stepdaughter, yet won the part without his help because he did not want family acting.

Casablanca's stolen exit papers are a classic example of which plot device made famous by Hitchcock?

A MacGuffin matters only because everyone on screen wants it, and co-author Joan Alison simply made these papers up for the original play; nobody at the studio ever questioned them.

A 1957 Brattle Theatre revival began a tradition of showing Casablanca in exam week at which university?

Harvard students packed the Brattle every finals week, a ritual credited with keeping the film famous while other hits of the 1940s faded from memory.

Which comedian wrote and starred in a 1972 film about a critic coached in love by the ghost of Casablanca's star?

Woody Allen adapted the story from his own 1969 Broadway play, with Jerry Lacy as the ghostly mentor and, unusually, Herbert Ross rather than Allen directing.

Casablanca's world premiere in 1942 was held on which American holiday, after a Free French parade?

Thanksgiving fell on November 26 that year, and the opening followed a march by Free French leaders, with their flag unfurled for the occasion.

To borrow Casablanca's leading lady from David O. Selznick, the studio lent him which of its own stars?

Olivia de Havilland was the price of the trade, and the studio got the better of it: Ilsa became one of the borrowed actress's best-known roles.

Which gangster-film star claimed to have turned down Rick in Casablanca, a story studio records contradict?

George Raft really had passed on High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, both of which made his rival a star, but the producer wanted that rival for Rick from the start.

Which German song do Major Strasser's officers sing in Casablanca before the café crowd drowns them out?

Die Wacht am Rhein was a substitute: the Nazi anthem first chosen for the scene was dropped because it was under copyright in neutral and Axis countries.

Producer Hal Wallis personally wrote which part of Casablanca, dubbed in by its star weeks after filming ended?

Rick's closing line was picked from two alternatives the producer cabled to the editor in August 1942, and the star was called back to record it.

Viewers dispute whether Casablanca's precious exit papers are signed by General Weygand or which other general?

Charles de Gaulle is the name in the English subtitles, though his signature would have been worthless: he led a government in exile in London, not the territory in the film.

In Casablanca's flashback, where has Ilsa agreed to meet Rick on the day she sends a farewell note instead?

A train station is the rendezvous, and when only her note turns up, Rick and Sam get out just ahead of the Nazis.

At which casino game does Rick help a young refugee couple win the price of their exit visas in Casablanca?

Roulette is where the husband, Jan, keeps losing until Rick steps in; the part went to Helmut Dantine, a Viennese refugee jailed by the Nazis after the Anschluss.

Casablanca's Oscar-winning director is credited with which country's first feature film, before moving to Hollywood?

Hungary credits him with directing and acting in its first feature, Today and Tomorrow, in 1912, and he had 64 European films behind him when the studio invited him to America at 39.

Which of these meant Casablanca could never show Ilsa leaving her husband for Rick?

The Production Code forbade showing a wife leave her husband for another man, so the writers' real puzzle was how to make her departure believable.

Which Ben-Hur director was producer Hal Wallis's first choice to make Casablanca but proved unavailable?

William Wyler was unavailable, so the producer turned instead to a close friend, who won the Oscar for the job.

Which future Dirty Harry director put together Casablanca's opening montage of the refugee trail?

Don Siegel also cut the film's invasion of France sequence, among the thousands of montages he made at the studio before directing features of his own.

Which Italian author of The Name of the Rose argued that Casablanca moves us because it piles up so many clichés?

Umberto Eco judged it a weak film by a critic's normal yardsticks, yet argued that so many stock situations crammed together give it the pull of myth.

Which 1996 Pamela Anderson action film did critic Roger Ebert say had a plot identical to Casablanca's?

Barb Wire puts its heroine in Rick's shoes: she runs a nightclub in the last free city of a war-torn future America when an old flame turns up needing a way out.

Murray Burnett co-wrote the play behind Casablanca in the summer of 1940 while holding down which day job?

Schoolteacher Burnett taught English at a vocational school, and a 1938 holiday that took in Nazi-occupied Vienna and a Riviera nightspot gave him the idea.

When Ilsa fell for Rick in Casablanca's backstory, she believed her husband had died escaping from what?

A concentration camp was where Victor Laszlo was reported killed, and Ilsa walked out on Rick the moment she learned her husband was alive and in hiding.

What does Ilsa do in Casablanca when Rick refuses her the exit papers, just before admitting she loves him?

Pulls a gun on him, but the threat collapses into a confession, and her account of why she left melts the bitterness Rick has carried ever since.

Casablanca's producer thought of recasting Sam as a woman, either Hazel Scott or which Stormy Weather star?

Lena Horne and Hazel Scott were both floated for a female Sam before the role went to a male singer borrowed from Paramount.

Which future director of Laura and Anatomy of a Murder tested for the role of Major Strasser in Casablanca?

Otto Preminger missed out on Strasser but, though born into a Jewish family, went on to play Nazis himself, most famously the commandant in Stalag 17.

Which radio comedian did a 1943 newspaper advertisement claim had an unbilled cameo in Casablanca?

Jack Benny was said to have been visiting the set and caught on film in a nightclub scene, and a Florida cinema offered free passes to anyone who could find him.

Which French New Wave director refused an invitation to remake Casablanca in 1974, citing its cult following?

François Truffaut said the film's cult status among American students was reason enough to leave it alone.

Which actor played a Rick-like gumshoe in The Cheap Detective, Neil Simon's 1978 parody of Casablanca?

Peter Falk, television's Columbo, had played a similar private eye for the same writer in Murder by Death two years earlier.

The wartime bar of the Cinema Vox, said to have inspired Rick's Café in Casablanca, was in which city?

Tangier had the continent's biggest cinema in the Vox, which opened in 1935 with 2,000 seats and a retractable roof and drew spies and refugees to its bar.

A real Rick's Café opened in Casablanca in 2004, founded by Kathy Kriger, whose previous career was as what?

A US diplomat and commercial attaché, she recreated the film's set inside a 1930 courtyard mansion built against the walls of the old medina.

Which number, sung by Sam as the café's band leader, is the only original song heard in Casablanca?

Knock on Wood was commissioned by the producer from the songwriters M. K. Jerome and Jack Scholl; every other tune heard in the café already existed.

Which actress, Rick's jilted girlfriend Yvonne in Casablanca, was the film's last surviving credited cast member?

Madeleine Lebeau, who died in 2016, had really fled France as the Germans advanced in 1940, and was stranded in Mexico when the Chilean visas she had bought proved to be forgeries.

Which character actor nicknamed "Cuddles" plays Carl, the head waiter at Rick's Café, in Casablanca?

S. Z. Sakall was given the pet name by the studio's boss, and the film's own credits misspell him as S. K. Sakall.

What is the name of the Russian bartender at Rick's Café in Casablanca who is hopelessly smitten with Yvonne?

Sascha was played by Leonid Kinskey, who said he got the job as the leading man's drinking buddy, after the first actor cast was judged not funny enough.

Which star of Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion appears uncredited in Casablanca as Emil, the croupier at Rick's?

Marcel Dalio had escaped France with his then wife, who plays Yvonne in the same film, while Nazi posters in the occupied country displayed his face.

Whose 1931 recording of Sam's ballad from Casablanca was reissued and hit number one during a musicians' strike?

Rudy Vallée benefited because the strike barred new recordings, so Sam's own actor could not cut a commercial version and the label reissued the old disc.

Major Strasser's arrival in Casablanca was shot on location, not in the studio, at which Los Angeles airport?

Van Nuys was then home to Metropolitan Airport, which became an Army airfield that same year; the famous foggy farewell was shot on a soundstage instead.

Which Shane star took over the part of Rick in a 1944 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Casablanca?

Alan Ladd played Rick in the hour-long broadcast, though the film's own trio of leads had done a half-hour radio version the year before.

Which 1990 Robert Redford drama was received as a failed attempt to recapture Casablanca's magic?

Havana cast Redford as a poker player in Cuba in 1958; most reviews were poor, and it took less at the box office than its $40 million budget.

In the unproduced stage play that became Casablanca, the pianist later renamed Sam went by which nickname?

The Rabbit was one of several changes: the play's Lois became Ilsa, and its Italian police captain Rinaldo became the Frenchman Renault.

In 1982 Chuck Ross mailed Casablanca's retitled screenplay to 217 agencies; what did a few offer to do?

Represent the script: just three made that offer, while 41 turned the classic down flat and only 33 of those who replied recognised it.