Noah Isenberg’s We’ll Aways Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie (2017) traces how the movie came to be, how the cast was selected, how the movie was shot, and how Casablanca became an iconic film.
Surprisingly, Diane had never seen Casablanca in toto, only some of the famous scenes. So, in preparation for reading We’ll Always Have Casablanca, we sat down and watched it–the first time for Diane, about the dozenth for me. Diane, of course, loved it.
I learned a lot about Casablanca that I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the role of the character of “Sam” (the piano player) was almost given Lena Horne. Instead, it went to Dooley Wilson–who didn’t know how to play the piano! Wilson sings “As Time Goes By” but a staff musician called Elliot Carpenter was the “ghost pianist.”
I didn’t know Humphrey Bogart sulked during the production because “he didn’t get the girl.” I didn’t know Ingrid Bergman was chosen to play Ilsa Lund (Bogart’s love interest) but only after an exhaustive battle. Decision makers at Warner Brothers thought Bergman was “too young” for Bogart.
What do you think of Casablanca? GRADE: A (for the movie and the book)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction xiii
Chapter 1 Everybody Comes To Rick’s 1
Chapter 2 Usual Suspects 43
Chapter 3 Stick My Neck Out For Nobody 85
Chapter 4 Such Much? 123
Chapter 5 We’ll Always Have Paris 163
Chapter 6 Play It Again 201
Chapter 7 A Beautiful Friendship 241
Acknowledgments 277
Notes 281
Illustration Credits 311
Index 313
A favorite of mine. And it looks gorgeous on Blu-ray. I’ve seen it about a dozen times also. I’ll have to look for the book. Damn, I wish the library was open.
Steve, our Public Libraries don’t allow us to RESERVE books, but I can add any title to a LIST that can be converted to RESERVE once the Libraries open up again.
My stopped allowing me to add anything to my reserve list. I have written down a few I want to add on once they reopen.
Love it. If not my all-time favorite (some days it is), right up there. I quote it often (including Captain Renault’s “I’m shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,” as he is handed his winnings). Ingrid was gorgeous then.
Jeff, I love all the snarky lines in CASABLANCA. According to Naah Isenberg, the Epstein brothers wrote most of those memorable lines.
So, was it true that they wanted Ronald Reagan as Rick originally?
Jeff, a number of names were floated for many of the roles in CASABLANCA. The cast they ended up with is fabulous!
One of my favourite movies!
As a German it also gave me some insight into what happend in those days of WW2 in other places/countries.
And I was really moved reading about director Michael Curtiz, a Hungarian Jew who worked first in Berlin but was lucky to be asked to come to the USA by the Warner Brothers who liked his style.
And of course a lot of European actors who had fled Nazism appeared in his movies, making really needed cash …
Wolf, many European refugees found roles in CASABLANCA. The sub-text of the movie is very powerful.
I read both this and his earlier book on Edgar Ulmer. And I also heard him speak in California a few years back. There was an earlier book on Casablanca too-The Making of Casblanca (Aljean Hametz ?). Of course, all of these books I have passed on. I do that too often.
It may be the best movie ever made if you look at all the elements, including important subject matter.
Patti, the Aljean Harmetz book was called ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE MAKING OF CASABLANCA. Maybe that was where I got the Reagan story. She also wrote books on the making of THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND.
I was able to download an ebook copy of this, George.
In my mid-teens I was a devoted Bogart fan, but this film was so hyped that it actually disappointed me the first time I saw it. Later viewings brought out the richness of Warner’s studio trappings and the genius of Curtiz’ direction.
Dan, I had the same reaction to CITIZEN KANE. It was so hyped up! Then when I saw it, I was underwhelmed.
That’s how I felt about RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. By the time we saw it, the hype was so overwhelming that nothing could live up to it.
Jeff, over-hyped movies have a lot to overcome. Unrealistic expectations ruin the experience.
Of the three legendary movies of this era–“Casablanca”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and “The Wizard of Oz”–I didn’t see any of them until Turner Classic Movies came along in the Nineties. “Casablanca” was definitely my favorite of the three, with “Wonderful Life” a close second. Didn’t care for “Wizard of Oz”. TCM has a terrific library of old movies, and film buffs should keep a close eye on it. Although I suspect most of them already do.
Michael, my wife loves OZ but I generally just like the Munchkinland section, then drift away,
I wish Comcast hadn’t pulled TCM from my package and added it to a sports heavy one. Got burned out on Wizard of Oz years ago as my kids always watched it a lot. Never liked It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m too much of a cynic I guess. Always liked the version where he goes berserk and kills everyone at the end (SNL I think).
Steve, when we called Comcast, they told us we could have just TCM for a monthly fee ($10) which I decided was reasonable, considering we watch/DVR several films a month.
Micheal, sadly I’ve been burned out on IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and THE WIZARD OF OZ. I’ve seen both movies dozens of times. Like you, I rank CASABLANCA above the other two classic films.
It’s one of my favorite movies. I love the “shocked” line. My favorite scene is when the germans singing their anthem get drowned out by the french singing Les Marseilles. I always tear up at that.
I’m a big fan of TCM, and one day hope to go up to LA for their film festival. I miss Robert Osborne, but am so glad Eddie Muller is now on the channel. When I get my tv guides, the first thing I do is look thru the week at TCM. I just wish they wouldn’t cut off the credits at the ends of some movies, which would save me going to IMDB to check the cast/roles
Maggie, I’ve never seen them cut off the end credits but maybe I just missed it. In pre-Fifties movies there’s usually not much in the way of end credits anyway, sometimes no more than THE END. Have you ever looked at their great website? You can get the schedule for a month or more and there’s a feature that’ll let you set a reminder for things you want to see, and you’ll get two email reminders when it’s coming up.
That’s what I did with TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, so I could record it, which I then did.
M thanks, I’ve never done that.
I don’t remember if the end showed up, but it seems like some movies are ones I’m sure I’ve seen credits on, but couldn’t say which ones.
Just a small correction:
the song Die Wacht am Rhein was not the official anthem but often played/sung in the times of the Prussian Emperors and also popular after 1918 with right wingers/fascists in Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein
The interesting fact is that in all those French/German wars the Rhine was always safe in German hands – most battles happened on French ground …
Today most Germans know neither the lyris nor the melody …
thanks, Wolf. I’m not sure either if the French were singing Les Marseilles but that’s what I remembered
Maggie, of course the French were singing “La Marseillaise!
The funny side of this which most people don’t even know:
The song is also connected to the Rhine – it was written during the days of the French revolution when Austrian and Prussian troops came over the river Rhine but were thrown back by the French soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise
PS and not too much OT:
I’m so happy that via the EU we now can be sure that there will be no more wars every new generation between the French and the Germans or the Ruusians, the Italians etc …
That was a horrible tradition – just two generations back:
My grandfathers fought in WW1 and my father in WW2 – and they were really lucky to survive, my uncles and many other family members did not come back.
Don’t remember whether I’ve told the story of my father in Hitler’s headquarter yet – if anyone’s interested I’ll write it down.
I love the film too, and somewhere – I looked but canon find it – I have a book on it, not this one. I don’t have a DVD of it, but did DVR it a few months ago.
Rick, the Blu-ray version of CASABLANCA is eye-popping!
As with Jeff M, some days this is my favorite movie. Other days it’s one that is not on any top ten lists, but I just adore, and that’s Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now — Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Venice.
Jeff, I haven’t seen DON’T LOOK NOW. I’ll track down a copy. Thanks for the recommendation!
I second the recommendation of “Don’t Look Now”. Great movie. Roeg’s “Bad Timing” is also excellent.
Wolf, I’d be interested in your father’s hitler story
Especially for Maggie.
my father was born and grew up near Danzig (Gdansk) which Germany lost after WW1 – it was turned into a Free State, inhabited by Germans and Poles. (After WW2 it became Polish). He became a soldier in the German army in the late 30s and was sent to the Black Forest where he met a good looking young blonde who became my mother …
He was just a sergeant but early in 1939 realised that something would happen so he asked his girlfriend to marry him. My grandmother later told us that the local Catholic priest came to her saying that she couldn’t/shouldn’t give her daughter to a Protestant heretic – but she showed him the door.
Just before the invasion into Poland they married but they didn’t want children because of the times.
My father later became an officer (AH needed them) and with his company of small anti aircraft guns (FLAK) was part of the outer defense ring of Hitler’s headquarter, one of them near Berlin. for a few months.
– part 1 –
part 2: (WP doesn’t like some words …)
He told me once that for R&R he was allowed into the headquarter and saw Hitler’s minions watching US movies, listening to Jazz music, drinking whiskey and champagne – all those things that were forbidden to the simple Germans …
Then he went back to the Russian front with his Flak. In the summer of 1942 he already realized that the war was lost – so I was conceived as a kind of souvenir for my mother because he saw the danger of losing his life – like many others, my mother’s brother e g who disappeared near Stalingrad without a trace. No one knows what happened to him.
part 3
In late 1942 the Germans were already moving backwards – with his FLA cannons he held back the advancing Russians until most of the German soldiers had made it back over the one bridge that hadn’t been destroyed. This happened near Millerovo, there was a book written about it – and he got the Knight’s Cross for this.
In 1944 he was severely wounded in the head and returned to Germany – that’s how he survived the war, but he always had brain problems, had to take a lot of pysycho stuff. He didn’t like to talk about these times, but I got some info from him.
Btw he also went through “denazification” but he was just a soldier, no party member, so he got a paper (we lived in the French Occupied Zone after WW2) from the French authorities declaring him an “also ran”, the lowest possible category so after the war he went back into state service, not the military of course. I still have a copy of this.
There is some info on himom the internet: Max Boehrendt