Casablanca film trailer from Warner Bros. Entertainment
May the force be with you as you try to figure out which Hollywood line we’ve been saying wrong, all along. You could have been a contender and perhaps ET could phone home for the answer, but fasten your seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Frankly, my dears, you may not give a damn, but the words on the silver screen are the stuff that dreams are made of. One thing is clear, we’re not in Kansas anymore as we head across the seas to a certain piano bar in Morocco.
The 1942 World War II classic Casablanca has six unforgettable entries on the AFI countdown of the 100 greatest lines in movie history, way more than any other entry.
Ironic, considering its stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, who played Rick and Ilsa, both “thought the dialogue was ridiculous and the situations were unbelievable,” according to fellow star Geraldine Fitzgerald. She recalled one occasion when “the whole subject at lunch was how they could get out of that movie.”
Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman (Image: GETTY)
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It seems extraordinary now, looking back at a Hollywood movie that has become an enduring classic, but even its screenwriter Julius J Epstein gave up trying to describe the plot to Gone With The Wind producer David O Selznick and said; “Oh, what the hell! It’s a lot of sh*t!”
Howard Koch, who also worked on the screenplay, described the chaos filming the early scenes in Rick’s Café Americaine, between Rick, Ilsa and her husband Lazlo, played by Paul Henreid – who also, incidentally, wanted to get out of the film.
Koch said in 2017: “When we began, we didn’t have a finished script. Ingrid Bergman came to me and said, ‘Which man should I love more?’ I said to her, ‘I don’t know play them both evenly.’ You see, we didn’t have an ending, so we didn’t know what was going to happen!”
Fitzgerald’s also made another extraordinary revelation: “Ingrid was terribly upset because she said she had to portray the most beautiful woman in Europe, and no one would ever believe that.”
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Casablanca starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman (Image: GETTY)
Even so, the finished script became regarded as a classic and included iconic lines like, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” which was improvised by Bogart, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, “Round up the usual suspects, “We’ll always have Paris” and, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
But there is still one quote that we all love to imitate, complete with Bogart’s inimitable drawl. It is, of course, about the classic song As Time Goes By, which holds a special place in Ilsa and Rick’s hearts.
However, nobody at any point in the film says: “Play it again, Sam,” as you can see in the clip below.
Ilsa tells musician Sam, played by Dooley Wilson, “Play it, Sam… Play it once more. For old time’s sake.” A little later, Rick also says, “You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it!”
Even more remarkable is the fact that Dooley was a well-known drummer and singer, but could not actually play the piano, and so he is only pretending to tickle the ivories on screen.
Of course, seeing and hearing in the movies isn’t always believing. Out of sight of the cameras, Bogart often stood on boxes or had three-inch blocks attached to his soles because he was shorter than Bergman.
And as for the famous on-screen chemistry between two stars playing one of cinema’s greatest tragic love stories, Bergman later said of Bogey: “I kissed him but I never knew him.”