{"id":50387,"date":"2017-02-22T17:05:10","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=50387"},"modified":"2017-02-16T09:28:24","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T07:28:24","slug":"22-05-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=50387","title":{"rendered":"One day on the set of Casablanca"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>One day on the set of Casablanca,<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Leslie Epstein\u2019s<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Header\"<\/p>\n

One day on the set of\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>, Peter Lorre persuaded a few soundmen to rig up a wire in the room where director Michael Curtiz, much like Claude Rains\u2019 Capt. Renault in the movie, had his afternoon trysts with young women. The whole set heard Curtiz loudly groaning, \u201cOh, God, yes!\u201d It\u2019s a joke worthy of the film itself: Even as\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>exalts romantic love and anti-Nazi idealism, it also mischievously nods to the cynic in the corner who is ready to pop the bubbles of amorous and political righteousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The habitual prankster Lorre, born Ladislav L\u00f6wenstein, was, like Curtiz, a Central European Jew. Here they were at the edge of far-off America, safe from Hitler, making a movie about European refugees trying to get out from under the Nazis. It was a subject that Hollywood had largely avoided, but now that the war was on Warner Bros. swung into action\u2014Casablanca came out in January 1943, a few months after the Allied invasion of North Africa. But\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>was no mere propaganda film: Instead, it came to embody the essence of The Movies, more than Chaplin\u2019s comedies or John Ford\u2019s Westerns or any of the great Hollywood musicals. How\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>became the\u00a0<\/span>echt<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>Hollywood movie is the subject of Noah Isenberg\u2019s hugely entertaining and insightful book,\u00a0<\/span>We\u2019ll Always Have Casablanca<\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll always have Paris.\u201d \u201cHere\u2019s looking at you, kid.\u201d \u201cRound up the usual suspects.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s just like any other man, only more so.\u201d \u201cThe Germans wore gray, you wore blue.\u201d \u201cPlay it, Sam\u201d (without the \u201cagain,\u201d please). And, of course, \u201cThe problems of three little people don\u2019t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.\u201d These words are part of our American heritage, as familiar as the Gettysburg Address. Their combination of stalwart manliness, romance, and wit seems now like the echo of a distant past, when we and the movies were young.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seventy-five years after\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>was\u00a0<\/span>released<\/a>, even cynicism isn\u2019t what it used to be, because there\u2019s no tenderness underneath. In\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca,<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>Bogart plays the rebel and jaded individualist: \u201cI stick my neck out for nobody,\u201d he says. But it turns out that being cynical is itself a kind of naivet\u00e9. Finally, you do stick your neck out, bruised and bitter as you are, even if as a result you lose the girl\u2014again.<\/span><\/p>\n

The movie\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is full of Jewish-refugee actors, as the actual Casablanca was full of refugee Jews, stuck in \u201cunoccupied France\u201d after the fall of Paris and trying to escape to the New World via Portugal. But the word \u201cJew\u201d never appears in the film: America\u2019s war effort depended on Americans not thinking that they were fighting, even in part, on behalf of European Jews. Indeed, in 1943 a substantial number of Americans still blamed the Jews for the war, just as Hitler did.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most colorful of the refugees was Yani \u201cCuddles\u201d Sakall, who plays Carl the waiter, bumbling and kindhearted, the movie\u2019s equivalent of a Borscht Belt tummler. Sakall was a native of Budapest and a friend of Curtiz from Vienna in the 1920s. On arriving in Los Angeles, he was at first anxious about not knowing English, but to his pleasant surprise he found himself surrounded by fellow Hungarian speakers who had fled from Hitler. A joke was making the rounds: Hungarians would be reminded that \u201cThis is Hollywood, here we speak German!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another joke was circulating, based on the \u00e9migr\u00e9s\u2019 sometimes-exaggerated claims for themselves: Two dachshunds run into each other on Hollywood Boulevard, and one says to the other, \u201cIn the old country, I, too, was a St. Bernard.\u201d Lotte Palfi, who appears briefly in Casablanca as a woman desperately trying to sell her diamonds, subtitled her autobiography\u00a0<\/span>I Was Never a St. Bernard<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018In\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Casablanca<\/em>, I kissed Bogart, but I never really knew him.\u2019 \u2014Ingrid Bergman<\/span><\/h5>\n

Much more prominent than Palfi was Conrad Veidt, a non-Jewish German actor who starred in the great silent classic\u00a0<\/span>The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari<\/em>. Veidt had married a Jewish woman and, just before he left Germany in 1933, was said to have written JEW in capital letters when asked about his race on an official Nazi form. Ironically, Veidt paid the bills in 1940s Hollywood by playing Nazis onscreen. His Major Strasser, shot by Bogart at the end of\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>, hits just the right note, prickly and commanding rather than fanatical.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lorre plays the oily, insidious Ugarte, who turns out to be a hero and gets killed in the first reel for his pains. Twitchy and perspiring, puffing on his cigarette, he makes an indelible impression as he wheezes out one of the movie\u2019s best lines. \u201cYou despise me, don\u2019t you?\u201d Lorre asks Bogart. (\u201cIf I gave you any thought, I probably would,\u201d is Bogart\u2019s cool response.) As in\u00a0<\/span>The Maltese Falcon<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>a year earlier, Lorre provided a touch of Weimar criminality, a dark reminder of Hollywood\u2019s Berlin roots: He had starred as a child murderer in Fritz Lang\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>M<\/em>, which prophetically hinted at a Germany run by leather-coated gangsters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sam, Dooley Wilson\u2019s character, is not an \u00e9migr\u00e9, but a racial outsider, and Wilson was praised at the time by African-American critics for refusing to do the stage-Negro routine. Sober and wary, Rick\u2019s truest companion, Sam is never obsequious or buffoonish. When Ilsa refers to him once, out of his hearing, as \u201cthe boy at the piano,\u201d today\u2019s viewer winces. But\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is remarkably free of the racism that usually pervaded Hollywood. (Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>trivia: Wilson couldn\u2019t actually play the piano, so that part was dubbed. He did sing, though.)<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

recomended by: <\/span>Leon Rozenbaum<\/span><\/strong>
\n \"\"<\/span>We\u2019ll Always Have Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is a treasure trove of information about the film\u2019s \u00e9migr\u00e9 actors, but also everything else you could ask for: the fascinating process of coming up with the script, the cast\u2019s relation on the set, and the movie\u2019s long afterlife in popular culture, right down to the latest SNL parody. Isenberg has produced a delightful page-turner of a book, perfect for every movie fan. He also proves in spades his main thesis: If you love movies, you love Casablanca. Part of the reason is that it was always on television\u2014a vivid memory to anyone who grew up in the 1960s and \u201970s. But there are deeper reasons, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>has been called the ultimate studio concoction, and for good reason. Its script and its cast were more important than its director. The very experienced Curtiz did good, solid work, and he got an Oscar for directing, stumbling through the acceptance speech in his comically imperfect English. (Sakall once joked that if you thought Mike Curtiz\u2019s English was bad, you should have heard him try to speak German.) But Curtiz was less influential than the movie\u2019s writers, stars, and producer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most crucial to\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u2019s triumph was the long, slow, contentious development of the screenplay. The seed for the movie sprouted from\u00a0<\/span>Everybody Comes to Rick\u2019s<\/em>, a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Burnett later sued Warner Bros. for rights to the characters he and Alison had created, without success. \u201cPlaintiffs may play it again, but they must do it in United States District Court,\u201d the New York State Supreme Court judge pronounced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Philip and Julius Epstein,\u00a0<\/span>identical twin screenwriters<\/a>, were the first to work over\u00a0<\/span>Everybody Comes to Rick\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and start turning it into\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>. In his autobiography, Kirk Douglas claims that the Epsteins were famous lovers because, midway through an assignation, one twin would retire to the bathroom and the other would emerge to replace him, with the woman none the wiser. (Julius Epstein disputes this as \u201cabsolutely not true,\u201d saying that Douglas was merely making a bad joke.) Whatever their romantic talents, the Epsteins were crack comedy writers, and they made\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>one of the funniest pictures ever to hit the big screen.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next screenwriter, Howard Koch, found the Epsteins\u2019 screwball comedy too silly\u00a0and was determined to add a dose of social conscience to the film. It was, after all, an anti-Nazi movie. Finally, there was the romantic angle, and for this the film\u2019s legendary producer, Hal Wallis, brought in yet another writer, Casey Robinson, to beef up the love story. Wallis made sure that the final product had all three elements: sizzling humor, an ageless love story, and a firm political message.<\/span><\/p>\n

Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>owes much of its longevity to the romance between Bogart and the young Ingrid Bergman. Up to this point in his career, the 42-year-old Bogart had mostly played gangsters, most notably the menacing yet vulnerable Duke Mantee in\u00a0<\/span>The Petrified Forest<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(1936), Stalin\u2019s favorite movie.\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>was Bogart\u2019s first romantic role, a prospect that made him so nervous he spent most of the filming playing chess on set or hiding in his dressing room: \u201cIn\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>, I kissed Bogart,\u201d Bergman later remarked, \u201cbut I never really knew him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bogart in\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>has an edge of malevolence, amplified a few years later in Nick Ray\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>In a Lonely Place<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(1950). The thrill of Rick and Ilsa\u2019s reunion is marked not just by Ilsa\u2019s holding a gun on him (briefly), but also his violent fury at having been dumped for Victor Laszlo, her Hungarian freedom-fighter husband. Paul Henreid, who played Laszlo, was bouncing off a spectacularly successful romantic role starring with Bette Davis in 1942\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Now Voyager<\/em>. But now he had to play second fiddle to Bogart, and he wasn\u2019t happy. In later years, Henreid laughably claimed that he agreed to do the movie only on condition that he would get the girl in the end. In any event, he doesn\u2019t get the girl\u2014Bogart gives her to him, because he is willing to sacrifice romantic happiness for a bigger cause, fighting the Germans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bogart\u2019s Rick had a mixture that was something new in the movies: toughness and elegance and, a little further down, kindness and bravery, all under that immaculate white dinner jacket. The Bogartian cocktail was tremendously appealing at the time, and it still is. Isenberg quotes Andrew Sarris\u2019 comment that starting with\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca,<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>\u201cBogart became the thinking man\u2019s patriot \u2026 liberal, skeptical, sardonic, suspicious at first but eventually heroic in the service of one unfashionable underdog or another.\u201d Bogart the reluctant warrior for a good cause makes his first appearance in\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>, to reappear in Howard Hawks\u2019\u00a0<\/span>To Have and Have Not<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(1944) and Ray\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Knock on Any Door<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(1949). His heroic decision has its effect even on the hard-to-crack Capt. Renault, in what is probably the most famous movie ending of all time. In the final minute of\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca,<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>Renault repurposes his earlier line, \u201cRound up the usual suspects,\u201d and cynicism becomes heroism: the beginning of a beautiful friendship.<\/span><\/p>\n

At a time when America, a country founded by the descendants of refugees, seems to be teaching itself to hate and fear them, we should all take another look at\u00a0<\/span>Casablanca<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Read Leslie Epstein\u2019s<\/strong> memory of his father and uncle\u2019s time at Warner Bros here.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One day on the set of Casablanca, Leslie Epstein\u2019s One day on the set of\u00a0Casablanca, Peter Lorre persuaded a few soundmen to rig up a wire in the room where director Michael Curtiz, much like Claude Rains\u2019 Capt. Renault in the movie, had his afternoon trysts with young women. The whole set heard Curtiz loudly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50387"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50396,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50387\/revisions\/50396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}