Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 85

85 Rounding Up Unusual Facts ERE ARE SOME facts about you may not have known: If Warner Bros had been serious about casting Ronald Reagan Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan as the stars of doubtful we would be celebrating the golden anniversary today Fortunately the announcement in the Jan 5 1942 Hollywood Reporter and the official studio press release two days later that Reagan Sheridan and Morgan would be teamed for a third time in were ruses according to a profusely illustrated coffee-table book which fans of the film will find full of indispensable lore Frank As lime Goes By the 60th Anniversary due in early May from Turner Publishing states that producer Hal Wallis had tailored the role of Rick Blaine for Bogart from the start and never intended to use Reagan The ploy evidently had two self-aggrandizing motives: to get young contract players some publicity and to stake a claim on the title for the film which eras in the early stage of adaptation from the unproduced day Comes to written by New York City high school teacher Murray Burnett and his collaborator Joan Alison For a 1982 American Film article writer Chuck Ross retyped the screen- play and submitted it to 21 7 agencies as Cranes to He reported that 85 oufc-' fits renondetfe 33 recognized what done eight thought it sounded too much like 38 like the script and rejected it three felt they could sell it one suggested turning it into a novel Actor Dooley Wilson's piano playing Bogart and Sidney Graanstreet who plays a sinister black-markataar with piano player Sam played by Dooley Wilson Despite apparent chemistry between Bergman and Bogart Bergman would say later 1 kissed him but I never knew dubbed The studio tried dubbing his voice too but the voiee-dubbing looked worse than the throaty singing that made Warner nervous So the studio let him sing thank goodness The most valuable souvenir of is the piano Wilson plays It was bought at suction by a Japanese company for $154000 making it the Becond-highrat selling piece of movie memorabilia ever The record is the $165000 paid by a Canadian collector for the ruby slippers from Wizard of bother to count: Bogart says looking at you four times twice in the Paris flashback twice in the final scenes Warner new fog mAin- cranked out mist for the final airport scene To make the set look bigger a slightly miniaturized plane was used with midgets in the background The last time we see Rains and Bogart walking toward the Free French garrison in Brazzaville and Bogart is saying I think this is the beginning of a beautiful also the start of a long walk Brazzaville is 1000 miles from Casablanca Gelmis was an embarrassment of riches that fills the smallest roles with huge talents Sinister Sidney Greenstreet has a bit part as the black-market boss and rival club owner The ever-perverae Peter Lorre a cameo as a two-bit sleaze merchant arrested in club for murdering a couple of German couriers At either end of the bad-guy good-guy spectrum are Conrad Veidt as suave urbane villain Nazi Mqjor Strasser and knight-in-double-breasted-white-linen-suit Paul Henreid as resistance leader Victor Laszlo Operating in the gray area between these extremes are the two complex self-mocking cynics: Claude Rains as the sly witty Capt Louis Renault chief of police for the collaborating French Vichy government and Bogart as the combative sardonic proprietor of Cafe Amerirain Through Rick an enigmatic character in unexplained self-exile from his American homeland Bogart became an icon: tough on the outside vulnerable on the inside "What is your asked by Strasser a Later on Renault asks him brought you to "My health" Rick replies came to Casablanca for the waters" waters? What waters? in the says Renault was says Rick Belligerent macho a hard drinker too smart not to be cynical but his cynicism is only skin deep: Scratch the surface and as Rains sneers as I thought: a rank sentimentalist" Bergman happy making She was impatient to play Maria in Whom the Bell which she felt would be a superior film And she was unnerved by never having a finished script while shooting The unforgettable farewell scene at the airport was written the night before it was filmed Until then Bergman know which of the two men mid up with old flame Rick or husband Victor Despite the apparent chemistry between her and Bogart Bergman would Bay later kissed him but I never knew She familiarized herself with the stand-offish screen presence and acting style by watching him over and over in Maltese Fal- ff COIL And though Bergman is gorgeous and endearing in the character she plays is out of fashion now Tlw is a Ping-Pong ball between the two males A mqjor actress would find it hard to recite her lines today because of the sexist implications: ran away from you Bergman moans to Bogart A) it again I know right any longer You have to think for both of us For all of And Bogart replies right I Furthermore despite its humanist liberal politics which includes treating African-American actor Dooley Wilson with a dignity rare for its era puts a slur in the mouth of poor Bergman When she first enters Cafe and sees Wilson at the piano she asks Rains the boy playing the piano who is Except for that one unfortunate word lines in her scenes with Wilson have passed into common usage: it Sam Play Time Goes hum it for you Di di di di da duh Di di di di da duh Sing it is full of scenes that are cultural reference points such as the sung defiantly at to drown out the German anthem And it is dense with dialogue that has entered the language as social currency: lisa: me Kiss me as if it were the last Rick: always have Bfek no good at being noble But it take much to see that the problems of three little people amount tQ- a hill of beans in -tius-frazy i vr of after TV of 1983 25 the 30 flow of the action without Blowing the lively pace The editing tempo ia effortlessly brisk And the literate dialogue eloquent gestures and intimate relationships malm the artifice of the sets irrelevant is the only pro-war masterpiece to come out of Hollywood It was based on an unproduced play Comes to written by New York City high school teacher Murray Burnett and his collaborator Joan Alison after the Germans had overrun Europe and begun bombing Britain Set in a city of refugees trying to get passage on a plane to Lisbon from which they could then get to America it is a call to arms for the last Just War for a moral crusade against the Nazis It is a call answered by Rick Blaine after Bsa Lund enables him to regain his lost faith in humanity He sacrifices his own happiness sends the woman he loves off to Lisbon with her husband an endangered resistance leader because the right thing to do Comes to arrived at Warner the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States declared war Wallis changed the name to and assigned the first of several teams of writers to work on it in early January 1942 Filming began May 25 and ended in August Warner planning to open until the spring of 1943 But the North African invasion had begun in late 1942 and by November the headlines were full of the battle of Casablanca To capitalize on the news the studio premiered the film Nov 26 1942 at the only important venue available on short notice the Hollywood Theater in New York opened nationally in January 1943 about the same time as President Roosevelt and Winston Casablanca conference It did well at the box office But it eligible for the 1942 Oscars because it had not opened in Los Angeles that year It did earn Oscar nominations for 1943 nearly a year after its theatrical run And the night of the Academy Award presentations in March 1944 stunned its makers by winning the Oscars for adapted screenplay directing en best picture Theextraordinary cast assembled for Renault: up the usual suspects" Rick to Renault: gun is pointed at your Renault: is my least vulnerable spot" Rick: all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine" The legacy of is a continuous afterlife at college repertory theaters on television broadcasts that draw consistently high ratings and on home video New generations are constantly being influenced by Woody Allen wrote and starred in It Again Sam" to act out his fantasy being a wimp advised by Bogart And as recently as Robert Redford plays a loner modeled Rick was spun off in short-lived series in 1955 and in 1983 An international poll critics voted their favorite movie in And in 1989 was among the first movies voted a place as an American treasure on National Film Registry of the Library of Con- NEWSDAY FRIDAY APRIL 10 1992 Through MGM Turner will show in cities theatrically this spring and then issue a million copies of a SOth-anniversary commemorative vid-' a August with a special segment narrated hyBo- A -4 a a -n-a a a a a a a A a a a 4 I.