Here’s Looking at 10 Facts About “Casablanca”

Rebecca Pahle and Mental_Floss present Here’s Looking at 10 Facts About Casablanca.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. THE SHOOT GOT OFF TO A ROUGH START.
The first scene that director Michael Curtiz and company shot was one of the flashback scenes in Paris, which caused some problems for stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Bogart because, in his own words, “I’m not up on this love stuff and don’t know just what to do,” and Bergman because, as the script had not yet been finished, she didn’t know whether her character was supposed to be in love with Rick or Victor Laszlo. Curtiz, who did not know himself, covered marvelously and told her to “play it in between.”

5. PART OF THE POSTER IS FROM ANOTHER BOGIE MOVIE.
In many of Casablanca’s better-known posters, the shot of a trench coat- and fedora-wearing Bogart wielding a gun was pulled almost exactly from a publicity shot from earlier Bogie film,Across the Pacific, by poster artist Bill Gold, who repainted it in a photorealistic style.

7. THE FIRST SCENE WAS SHOT BY ANOTHER FAMOUS DIRECTOR.
Casablanca’s opening scene, the map sequence with a voiceover explaining how refugees from World War II came to be in Casablanca, was created by Don Siegel, who in later years would direct some classics of his own, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Dirty Harry (1971).