The Celebrity Cafe | Robert Kirchgassner
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the classic movie Casablanca.
The film stars Humphrey Bogart as the owner of a café in Morocco who is reunited with his former love (Ingrid Bergman) and reluctantly agrees to assist her husband (Paul Henreid), a leader of the Czech Resistance, in his fight against the Nazis.
Bogart’s Rick and Bergman’s Elise are arguably the most famous of all on-screen couples, rivaled only by Clark Gable’s Rhett and Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett in Gone with the Wind (1939).
The film won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director (Michael Curtiz) and Screenplay.
It was also rushed into release to help publicize the Allied invasion of North Africa, which occurred only weeks earlier.
The entire cast is terrific, although the scene-stealer is Claude Rains as a police chief who may have a hidden agenda.
The film also has lines which became famous such as:
“Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”
“Play it, Sam!”
“Round up the usual suspects.”
And “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
