Casablanca/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Beam Me Up, Scotty: Almost everyone knows the classic line, "Play it again, Sam." ...except the line never appears. It's simply "Play it, Sam." With the "again" later on. Hence the title of Woody Allen's film Play It Again, Sam, which has Allen's neurotic Jew being given advice on how to pick up ladies from the ghost of Bogart. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • Austrian actor Paul Henreid played Victor Laszlo, who's Czech (though his name actually sounds Hungarian).
    • Swedish Ingrid Bergman playing Norwegian Ilsa Lund. Though given the close connection between Sweden and Norway it almost doesn't qualify.
    • American Joy Page played Annina, the young Bulgarian wife. She was one of only three American born actors in the film (Bogart and Wilson being the other two).
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: Conrad Veidt as Major Strasser - It has been reported, though not verified, that Veidt identified himself as Jewish on Nazi questionnaires as an act of protest.
    • Ironically all of the German actors in the film were Jews or German expatriates who fled the country when the Nazis took over, only to play Nazis in Hollywood.
      • Which most of them (Veidt in particular) were pleased to do, seeing it as a form of resistance by telling the world what the Nazis were like.
  • Reality Subtext: A number of the actors and extras were actually refugees of Nazi oppression, including Conrad Veidt, who played Major Strasser. This added extra meaning to the Marseilles scene, as most of the emotion from the actors was genuine.
    • It also adds more meaning to Ugarte's arrest, since his actor Peter Lorre was a Jew who fled Nazi Germany to escape exactly what happens to Ugarte. The line where he begs Rick, "Hide me!" particularly stands out, now.