Monthly archives for April, 2012

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Still Motoring on Mondays — With ‘Prince’ Gable.

Apr30
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Here’s another Hollywood great, and a great car from the 1930s.

Hello Everybody.  It’s Monday again and Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, are here to chat about one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Yup, that’s Clark Gable above posing with his 1932 Packard. (What a great looking car, and the 31-year-old Gable looks pretty good too.)

At the time this shot was taken, Gable was not quite the box office “king” he came to be but he was certainly well into his “prince” period.  In other words, his star was rising in a hurry.

Director Frank Capra’s classic, It happened One Night, was two years ahead. Gone With The Wind was seven years away.  Three years into Gable’s future was Mutiny on the Bounty and The Call of the Wild, the adventure drama costarring Loretta Young, which allegedly resulted in Young’s illegitimate daughter by the actor (Judy Lewis), a matter still debated today on Classic Movie Chat.

In 1932, Gable made three movies for MGM and one for Paramount.  In Polly of the Circus, his costar was Marion Davies, a talented screen comedienne but best known today as William Randolph Hearst’s paramour.

In Red Dust, Gable was a perfect mate for Jean Harlow. A change of pace was Strange Interlude, based on the Eugene O’Neill drama, with Gable teaming up with Norma Shearer.  In No Man of Her Own, Gable played opposite Carole Lombard, who seven years later became the actor’s third wife.

We like the leafy location of this publicity shot, and Lawdie, they really made cars back then, didn’t they?

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More Stars From Mexico– Life and Death of a 1930s “Spitfire”

Apr27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

The 1930s had many Hollywood stars who had come from south of the border. There were the one name ones, Movita (Castenada) and Margo.  There was that most Mexican of all (although he’d been born in the U.S. and his family had been in California for generations) Leo Carrillo.

And there was the “Mexican Spitfire,” Lupe Velez.

Hello everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to clear up some misconceptions about Lupe Velez, whose career spanned over 18 years, and who is not terribly well understood by today’s audiences.

Although, as noted, she’s often referred to as the “Mexican spitfire,” Lupe Velez was a major star in Hollywood long before she made those “B” films with Leon Errol at RKO in the late 30s and early 40s which gave her that nickname.

She had started in silents, and had even co-starred opposite the great Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho. Despite what people today think, she spoke perfect English with only a slight accent.  She had come from an upper class Mexican family, and had been educated at a convent in San Antonio.

When talkies arrived Lupe was in great demand.  Many films in the early days of talking pictures were shot in two languages simultaneously, and of course, she spoke perfect Spanish. Because of her exotic looks she was often cast in parts calling for an ethnic beauty.

Her personal life was tumultuous. She, like her contemporary, Clara Bow, lived the life of a liberated flapper.  She had affairs with John Gilbert and Gary Cooper (pictured below)

Lupe married only once — to Johnny Weissmuller in 1933.  They divorced in 1939. She reportedly had affairs with Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin and Erich Maria Remarque.

When her film career stalled in the late 30s, she went to back to Mexico and filmed La Zandunga, costarring Arturo de Cordova, with whom she was also romantically involved. It was her first film shot in her home country.

Then she tried Broadway. Back in Hollywood she struck gold again with the “Spitfire” series.  In the films she spoke in broken English, and displayed her fiery temper reinforcing the stereotype we have of her today.

Again, dissatisfied at being typecast, she returned to Mexico to display her range of talent by portraying Nana in a Mexican film based on the famous Emile Zola novel.

Through the years many myths have been spun about her suicide.

Fact: she was pregnant.

Myth: that the child was Weissmuller’s or Gary Cooper’s.

It was in fact by Austrian actor Harald Maresch (below).

Fact: She took an overdose of sleeping pills and left a suicide note.  Her body was found by her companion and secretary of ten years, Beulah Kinder. Newspaper reports of the day said she was discovered on her bed which was strewn with flowers.

Those are facts.

But through the years there has been much conjecture.  Andy Warhol’s film, Lupe, starring Edie Sedgwick has her dying with her head in a toilet bowl. And this myth has been promulgated through other contemporary media, via an episode of “Frazier,” and another of “The Simpsons.”

Remember:  that is Andy Warhol’s version of events. Not Ms. Kinder’s.

We encourage you to see the films of Lupe Velez (if you can locate them). She was a unique performer and one of Mexico’s most alluring exports.

 

 

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Rita’s Last Years

Apr26
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys


After her marriage to fourth husband Dick Haymes ended, Rita Hayworth married one more time, to producer James Hill, who was a partner of Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster in the company Hecht, Hill and Lancaster.

Rita continued to make films including one, Separate Tables, for her new husband’s company.  She gave an excellent performance opposite Lancaster as a former beauty desperate for love.  In fact through the 1960s, Rita gave many excellent performances in films.

But her heart was no longer in it.  She worked merely to support herself and her daughters, Rebecca (by second husband Orson Welles) and Yasmine (by third husband Prince Aly Khan.)

Hello everybody.  Classic movie guys Joe Morella and Frank Segers here to conclude our series on Rita Hayworth, one of the top stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

A few days ago we ran a color photo of Rita which is incorrectly identified as the ‘Shawshank Redemption Poster.’  The shot was indeed put onto a poster and used in the film, but it existed long before the film was made.

In fact it was used as the cover for the British edition of Joe’s book (co-authored with Edward Z. Epstein) Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth, back in the early 80s.

Below is the cover of the U.S. edition.  We humbly suggest you read the book. There is so much more to know about “The Love Goddess.”

Hollywood’s first princess died of Alzheimer’s disease in her New York City apartment on May 14, 1987. Her caretaker, daughter Yasmine, was there until the end.

 

 

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RITA HAYWORTH — Hollywood’s First Real Princess.

Apr25
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

With all the hubub surrounding actress Grace Kelly’s fairy-tale marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956 — thus ending her 11-picture movie career — classic movie fans may be forgiven for assuming that Kelly was Hollywood’s first genuine princess.

She wasn’t.  Rita Hayworth was.

Hello, everybody. Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers here with another blog in our Rita Hayworth series.  (Mrs. Norman Maine is out lunching with Prince Harry.)

In the spring of 1948 — while still separated from Orson Welles, the second of her five husbands; the divorce was final by the following December — Hayworth then 30 years old decided to take her first vacation trip to Europe.

Her super-controlling Columbia Pictures boss appreciated the publicity value of the jaunt, and gave his blessing — a miscalculation that Harry Cohn would later regret, wrote the mogul’s biographer, Bob Thomas. Rita turned to her friend, British actor David Niven, for advice on a travel schedule.

In his 1975  memoir Bring On The Empty Horses, Niven wrote: Knowing how genuinely shy and gentle she was and respecting her longing to avoid the goldfish bowl of publicity, I worked out a complicated itinerary for her starting with a small Swedish liner to Gothenburg, quiet country hotels and mountain villages all the way south and ending up in an oasis of Mediterranean calm, the Hotel La Reserve in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.

Everything went beautifully according to plan and after three leisurely and peaceful weeks, she arrived radiantly relaxed at La Reserve. The champion charmer of Europe, Prince Ali Khan, saw her walk in and a new chapter was added to Hollywood history.

By the time he first laid eyes on her, Aly Khan was 37, one of the world’s most famous horsemen and jockeys, an avid socialite and a dedicated playboy. He was the son of Aga Khan III, a Persian spiritual leader who headed a worldwide branch of the Shia Muslim faith. His mother was an Italian ballet dancer, and he was raised in opulent royal style in Europe.

His romance with Rita took off quickly, and by the time they married in May of 1949, Hayworth was pregnant with the couple’s only daughter, Yasmine.  Khan very much wanted the wedding ceremony to be held at L’Horizon, his pink villa in Vallauris near Cannes, and adamantly refused a Hollywood-style affair, open to the press.

Niven again: An embittered Parisian newshawk broke the deadlock. He unearthed a Provencal law from Napoleonic times which stated that no wedding could be held in private if one citizen objected.  Dozens of citizens — reporters from all over France — signed the objection and the local Mayor announced that the wedding must be held in public at the Mairie (town hall).

So it was, followed by athe private reception at L’Horizon with at least 500 guests from the U.S. and Europe attending, gorging themselves on pound after pound of caviar, hundreds of bottles of champagne and a wealth of gourmet delights. The swimming pool was reportedly scented with gallons of eau de Cologne.

Columbia’s boss was furious.  He had plans for Rita, and they did not include marriage to a Moslem (sic) prince, wrote Thomas in King Cohn: The Life And Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn. 

Rita did not return to the screen until 1952 when she costarred with Glenn Ford in Columbia’s Affair In Trinidad, a noirish attempt to re-create the magic generated six years before in Gilda.  Cohn was right. Her marriage to Aly Khan (they divorced in January 1953) did nothing to advance her movie career.

Rita’s 1953 marriage to her fourth husband, singer Dick Haymes, came about because she felt sorry for him when he came to visit her in Hawaii during the filming of ‘Miss Sadie Thompson,’ wrote Cohn biographer Bob Thomas. The trip brought him under the threat of deportation since he was an Argentine citizen (Haymes was born in 1918 in Buenos Aires) and had not notified authorities that he was traveling to an American territory. Rita married him to eliminate the possibility that he would be deported.

Soon Dick Haymes was dictating the style of Rita’s hair, her costumes in films, the kinds of roles she should play. Haymes also volunteered to produce Rita’s pictures and to costar opposite her.  It was more than …Cohn could bear…

As the decade of the Fifties moved forward, Rita’s career moved in the opposite direction. Her star was fading. Her pictures were not the box office successes that earlier ones had been. It was then that the fed-up Cohn determined that “we will make a star” at Columbia.

Her name was Marilyn (aka Kim) Novak. To finish out her contract at Columbia Rita agreed to star with Frank Sinatra and Novak in Pal Joey. Hayworth still received top billing.


 

 

 


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RITA IN COLOR — Hubba, Hubba, indeed!

Apr24
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys here with another entry in our series about one of our favorite stars, Rita Hayworth.

By the early 1940′s, she had completed her journey from teenage dancing sensation to actress-to-be-coped-with. The unfolding decade of the Forties was hers, not only because of her alluring screen presence.

Much credit goes to that provocative photo in Life Magazine in the summer of 1941, showing Rita, with bosom thrust forward, kneeling in a negligee on top of a silken bed.  The shot (taken by Bob Landry) sent GI libidos skyrocketing making Hayworth World War II’s second most popular pinup (Fox’s Bette Grable was first).

After Rita’s successes on movie loan outs to both Fox and Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn realized he had a star.  He shrewdly teamed her in two films with another dancer, someone by the name of Fred Astaire.

Rita dances impressively (no wonder!) with  Astaire in 1941′s You’ll Never Get Rich and in 1942′s You Were Never Lovelier. Then came Cover Girl, in color. In the midst of this burgeoning superstardom Rita married boy wonder Orson Welles.  They had a daughter, Rebecca.  But they soon parted.

Her films were back in black and white but their grosses proved that Columbia had its first genuine home studio grown STAR. If one movie is Rita’s signature hit it has to be 1946′s noirish Gilda, one of several movies opposite Glenn Ford, which features Rita’s simulated striptease to the tune, ‘Put The Blame On Mame.’

Rita would later say, Every man I’ve known has fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me.

At the behest of second husband Orson Welles – to Cohn’s intense displeasure — she bobbed her hair for 1947′s The Lady From Shanghai (and also divorced the director after the picture was made). The marriage to Welles typified Hayworth’s misguided choices of husbands. She preferred dominant mates who would tell her what to do.

The Lady From Shanghai was a box office dud at the time but has since become a cult classic.  Even though it was a commercial failure it did not dim Rita’s bright star.

The five-year union with Welles ended with the director announcing that (in Rita’s words) the institution of marriage “interfered with his freedom in his way of life.”

As for Rita herself, she told reporters, “certainly I’m going to marry again.” True to her intentions, Hayworth in a matter of months embarked upon the most famous of her five marriages, to Prince Aly Khan.

Tomorrow, Rita Hayworth — Hollywood’s first real princess.

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Rita, Her Limo — And A Rising Career.

Apr23
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Since we’re concentrating on the life and career of Rita Hayworth this week we thought we’d have Rita as the subject of our Motoring on Mondays.  So here she is — all of 23 years old — posing next to her 1941 Lincoln Continental.

Hayworth hadn’t yet reached the heights of stardom by 1941, but she was well on her way. She appears casually elegant above, and looks great.  This is definitely one instance where our star is not upstaged by the auto.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to continue our celebration of Rita in all her considerable glory.

To give you some idea of how Hayworth’s career stood at the time this publicity shot was taken, we should note that Gilda, her signature movie opposite Glenn Ford, was five years away.  The Lady From Shanghai was six years off, and Miss Sadie Thompson was a full 12 years in her future.

Nonetheless, 1941 was a busy year for Rita.  She made four — count ‘em — movies that year: The Strawberry Blond, Affectionately Yours, Blood and Sand and You’ll Never Get Rich.  In the latter, she danced (most gracefully) for the first time with Fred Astaire.

Rita at this time was also pretty much free and fancy on the romantic front. Her first marriage to much-older manager Edward Judson was winding down, and someone by the name of Orson Welles was beginning to become more interesting. (Hayworth and Welles married two years later.)

The Forties belonged to Rita, and here she is with her auto at the beginning of it all.

 

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There was only one Rita!

Apr20
2012 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

Columbia Pictures was one of the major studios during Hollywood’s Golden Era of the 1930s and 40s, but unlike the others it never developed its own stars. With one exception. Rita Hayworth.

And what a star she was.

Hello Everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here to recall the career and impact of one of Hollywood’s brightest luminaries.

Margarita Cansino came from a show business family.  Her father Eduardo Cansino was from a long line of professional dancers from Seville, Spain.  He and his sister had great success on Broadway and in nightclubs.  He’d married a beautiful showgirl of Irish American background (Volga Haworth), and they had three children, Margarita, and two sons.

Margarita was given dance lessons from the moment she could walk. Eduardo pressed his daughter into service early and by 14 Margarita was her demanding dad’s dancing partner, working hard to meet his professional expectations. It wasn’t Columbia Pictures that discovered her, it was rival studio Fox in the form of production head, Winfield Sheehan, who found her dancing at a casino-resort in Baja California.

By 1935, Margarita was dancing in a gambling-ship scene in Dante’s Inferno, and was subsequently offered a Fox contract paying her the tidy sum (at the time) of $200 per week demanded by her father. But then the star-to-be, Rita Cansino, then all of 17, learned a hard lesson in Hollywood politics. Her mentor Sheehan was fired, and all his projects were cancelled when a new production chief, one Darryl F. Zanuck, took over after the merger of Fox and Twentieth Century.

The connection with Columbia was secured by Margarita’s first of five husbands, Edward Judson, whom she married in 1937 when she was 18 and he 40 (her father was furious). Like most of her spouses, Judson managed and controlled her career. Columbia changed her name to Hayworth.

A new authority figure (and frequent adversary) in Rita’s life was the most notorious of the old studio bosses, Columbia’s Harry Cohn. He took little notice of his future star early on, even after she had her hair dyed from her natural black to auburn, and endured a painful uplifting of her hairline through electrolysis.

It wasn’t until Rita made the most of her small, wifely role in Howard Hawks’ 1939 Only Angels Have Wings that it began to dawn on the studio brass what they had in Hayworth.

Credit Hawks for his advice at the time to the Columbia supremo: If you’re smart, the director told Cohn, you won’t do anything with her until the picture comes out. No other movies, no publicity, nothing. Just wait until the public sees her. Then you’ll know what you’ve got…. Cohn quickly found out.

The ascending stardom of Rita Hayworth provided a new and stimulating experience for Harry Cohn, wrote wrote Bob Thomas in his 1967 biography King Cohn: The Life and Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn. 

Rita was a bonanza…She was perfect material for stardom, as malleable as gold…Every time Cohn lent her to another studio, she not only returned several times her normal salary; she also came back a bigger star. And the pictures she made for Columbia did not even have to be good in order to make money. 

Shy in private, Rita sizzled onscreen. Next week we’ll take a look at some of her signature movies.  Hayworth made her share of duds but she also starred in some very good pictures. Stay tuned.

 

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A Legacy of Stardom

Apr19
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Last week we discussed children who had BOTH parents who were stars and those who have entered show business and those who haven’t.

Liza Minnelli’s mother and father (Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli) were undoubtedly two of the most talented and successful movie personalities of the mid twentieth century. She as a star, he as a director.

We began wondering who else was born in the 1940s who had TWO successful and well known parents.  And we came up with a couple of surprises.

Hello Everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again. (Rest assured that our parents were NOT famous.)

Two famous show biz couples in the 1940s were Betty Grable and Harry James and Alice Faye and Phil Harris.  James and Harris were bandleaders and musicians, not actors, but you must remember that back then Big Bands, and Bandleaders, were Stars.

Grable and James had two daughters, neither of whom have gone into show business. Faye and Harris had two daughters, and neither of them decided to follow in their parents footsteps either.

Some of you out there might recall that on their radio program Alice and Phil had two daughters who were part of the “act.” But they were portrayed by professional radios actresses, not the Harris offspring. On the radio series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, the parts of the Nelson’s two sons were also originally played by professional actors. But the Nelsons, unlike the Harrises, decided to allow their children to join the “act.”

So the Harris girls and the James girls entered and stayed in private life.

But David and Ricky Nelson (below) were, like many, just entering the family business. Harriet Hilliard Nelson’s parents had been headliners in Vaudeville. She was a band singer and actress in films.  Rick Nelson went on the great success as a rock star and his children continue the family legacy.  His daughter, Tracy Nelson, is and actress and his twin sons are rockers.  Of course those three have show business on both sides of their family. Their maternal grandparents were Tom Harmon and actress Elyse Knox (Mark Harmon’s parents.)

Who, of the current crop of “stars” has the most famous lineage?  That would have to be Drew Barrymore (pictured at top.)  Drew is descended from several famous show business clans. Her grandparents were John Barrymore and Delores Costello. Delores and her sister Helene were famous silent stars and the daughters of Maurice and Mae Costello of theatre fame.

(Don’t miss Delores in one of her last films as Tim Holt’s mother in Orson Welles’ magnificent production of The Magnificent Ambersons.)

Of course many books can, and have been written about the famous families of the theatre, the Drews and the Barrymores.

Some succeed admirable going into the “family business.”  Others fail.  Others choose another line of work.

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Hedda and Louella — a ‘Don’t Invite ‘Em’ if there ever was one.

Apr18
2012 3 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

Louella was short, dumpy and unattractive, a three-times married Catholic who delivered innumerable Hollywood “excloooseeves” (as she pronounced it) for the Hearst publishing empire and its Los Angeles Examiner flagship. Orson Welles was her bete noir.

Hedda, an ex chorus girl and character actress, was better looking — tall and thin, and elegant of appearance who barked out questions like a county prosecutor. (You can check her out via her cameo role in Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic, Sunset Blvd.). Hopper’s flagship paper was the Los Angeles Times. Hedda despised Charlie Chaplin.

Together, their daily reports of studio coups, production snafus and star indiscretions reached some 75 million readers, giving the columnists enormous power in an inherently nervous town.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to briefly recall the bygone era of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

These two gutsy women were at various times called vindictive, semi-literate, often inaccurate and ‘ silly women.’ Whatever, they influenced Hollywood movie making and mores for nearly three decades. It only needed one of these ladies to hint that an actor or actress was ‘box office poison’ for contracts to be terminated and studio doors to be slammed, wrote actor David Niven in his very entertaining 1975 memoir, Bring on the Empty Horses.

Only Hollywood could have spawned such a couple and only Hollywood, headline-hunting, self-inflating, riddled with fear and insecurity, could have allowed itself to be dominated by them for so long,

Niven pointedly noted that this unlikely couple had this in common — they loathed each other.

Anecdotes about the pair’s reporting gaffes are numerous, but nowhere near as numerous as their combined scoops.

Competition between the two was ferocious.  Hedda supposedly ran with an item calling George Burns the lousiest actor she ever saw. Angered, Louella supposedly phoned Burns complaining to HIM that she didn’t get the item first.

Niven felt that a large part of their columns was pure fabrication. He wrote that Hedda once tried to dissuade Elizabeth Taylor from marrying British actor Michael Wilding because he had indulged in homosexual relations with Stewart Granger.  Despite Niven’s assertions that Wilding was indeed heterosexual, Hopper decided to run with the item anyway in a book she was preparing. The upshot: Hedda and her publisher were sued for three million dollars and had to cough up a hefty settlement and an abject apology.

Then there is the matter of Joseph Cotten and Deanna Durbin, the Southern Virginia gentlemen and the wholesome wunderkind from Winnepeg.  In 1943, the pair were costarring at Universal in the 1943 musical drama, Hers To Hold.

According to Cotten’s most readable 1987 autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, the two coincidentally slept over one night — separately — in their respective studio quarters, arriving at the lot an hour apart from each other.

Shortly after Hopper’s phone rang, the item appeared in her column that Cotten and Durbin, married to others at the time, were indeed an item. Cotten was furious, and phoned the columnist with this statement: If you mention my name in your column personally again, I’ll kick you in the ass.

At a swanky dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel soon after, Cotten did just that. Hedda was sitting in a cane-bottomed chair, and contact (of the kick) was positive enough to disturb the flower garden on top of one of the outrageous hats for which she was renowned, Cotten wrote.

After a moment of stunned silence a “group of gentlemen” surrounded the actor, carrying him from the room on their shoulders to the bar, where I was toasted in champagne by all.

Niven is generous overall in his assessment of the columnists. It took guts and ability for Hedda and Louella to rise to the top of this inkstained pile of professional reporters, and it took tremendous stamina and craftiness on their part to remain there for a quarter of a century.

Hedda died in 1966 at the age of 80.  Louella outlived her, expiring at 91 in 1972. In the photo above Louella’s on the left, Hedda on the right, and a long forgotten woman in between.

 

 

 

 

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‘Shocked, Shocked’ — Answers To Our CASABLANCA Quiz

Apr17
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

As mentioned last week, Casablanca, made in 1942, is 70 this year. Few movies in history have worn their ages any better than this Warner Brothers creation. It looked great then, and looks even greater now.

Hello everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, politely asking just how much DO you know about this classic-of- classics costarring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Marcel Dalio and Dooley Wilson.

Since you are reading Classic Movie Chat, we assume you already know a fair amount. Therefore, our quizlet –based on material found in author Aljean Harmetz’s authoritative 2002 book The Making of Casablanca – is designed to explore your knowledge of the movie’s finer points, and to scotch some of the myths that have developed about the picture over the decades.

Ok, let’s see how you did:

Question – While Casablanca was not the most expensive picture made by Warner Brothers in 1942, it’s production budget wasn’t exactly chopped liver. How much did it cost to make? 1) $3 million; 2) $2,324,000; 3) $950,000; or 4) $1,039,000.

Answer: No. 4, the movie cost just a tad over a million.  That was considered a relatively modest sum for an A picture back then. 

Question – Wasn’t George Raft the producers’ first choice to play the Rick Blaine role that went to Bogie, and didn’t Raft turn the part down?  True or False.

Answer:  False.  Studio boss Jack Warner suggested to producer Hal Wallis that Raft should star in the movie.  Wallis, barely polite, dismissed the suggestion out of hand.  Casablanca, he asserted, was written for Bogie. 

Question: Although it made her a star, Bergman always regarded the part of Ilsa Lund as no big deal. What movie role did she really covet at the time she made Casablanca? 1) the title part in The Song of Bernadette; 2) as Paula Alquist in George Cukor’s Gaslight; 3) as Georgia Brown in Cabin In The Sky; 4) as Maria in For Whom TheBell Tolls; or 5) as Dr. Constance Peterson in Spellbound.

Answer:  4) Maria in For Whom The Bell Tolls opposite Gary Cooper.

Question: Which of these actresses were NOT seriously considered for the Ilsa Lund role played by Bergman? 1) Claudette Colbert; 2) Merle Oberon; 3) Michelle Morgan; or 4) Marlene Dietrich.

Answer: 1), 2) and 4). French actress Morgan was considered for the role, but was turned down by producer Hal Wallis because she demanded a $55,000 salary, which he determined was unreasonably high. Bergman’s services came for less than half Morgan’s pricetag. 

Question:  How did director Michael Curtiz spend much of his time between takes at the studio? 1) playing chess with Bogie and Henreid; 2) engaging in sexual liaisons with various starlets; 3) working close with key actors on upcoming scenes;  or 4) berating extras and production personnel.

Answer:  1) and 2) but perhaps a bit of 4).  For more on Curtiz’ sexual hijinks, see our March 21 blog, Peter Lorre: The Prankster of ‘Casablanca.’

Question:  ”As Time Goes By,” Casablanca’s signature song performed by Dooley Wilson, was almost dropped from the picture during production.  Why? 1) Jack Warner felt his studio wasn’t being paid sufficiently in song royalties; 2) Wilson disliked performing it; 3) Casablanca’s composer Max Steiner hated it, and wanted to replace it with a love song he wrote; or 4) Bergman regarded the song as much too sentimental.

Answer:  3) Composer Max Steiner disliked the 1931 Herman Hupfeld song written for the Broadway musical, Everybody’s Welcome (and later recorded by Rudy Vallee).  For reasons of plot continuity, though, Steiner didn’t get his way. “As Time Goes By” stayed.

Question: Which one of these cast members was related to studio boss Jack Warner? 1) S.Z. Sakall, who played the genially rotund manager of Rick’s; 2) Leonid Kinskey, the lecherous bartender at Rick’s; 3) Curt Bois, the gregarious pickpocket seen early in the movie; 4) Joy Page, the young Bulgarian wife who catches the eye of Captain Renault; or 5) Marcel Dalio, croupier at Rick’s.

Answer: 4) Joy Page, who was Jack Warner’s 17-year-old stepdaughter and still in high school when she spent two months on the Casablanca production. In this case, nepotism paid off. 

Question: How many Oscars did Casablanca win?  1) None; 2) five; 3) three; or 4) two.

Answer: 3) for best picture, best director (Curtiz) and best screenplay (Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch).

Question:  Casablanca’s script was one one of the best original screenplays ever written? True or False.

False: the movie was based on a 1940 play, Everybody Comes To Rick’s, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Writes author Harmetz: “Much of the raw material of Casblanca can be found in (the play’s) three acts.”

Question:  Casablanca was a box office bomb when it first came out?  True or False.

Answer: False. The movie finished production on Aug. 3, 1942, opened in New York City the following Nov. 26, and played widely throughout the country in January 1943.  It was a solid box office hit, 1943′s seventh most popular film drawing $3.7 million in ticket sales.  And, it drew good notices with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times writing that the picture “makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap.”  


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