Humphrey Bogart

by Darwin Porter

  The review from Pauline Kael didn’t help much either. “ The Barefoot Contessa is a trash masterpiece: a Cinderella story in which the prince turns out to be impotent. It’s hard to believe Mankiewicz ever spent an hour in Hollywood; the alternative supposition is that he spent too many hours there.”

  ***

  In January of 1942 Bogie was disheartened to read an item in the Hollywood Reporter, claiming that Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan, the lovers in Kings Row, had been selected to head the cast in Casablanca, with Dennis Morgan as the third lead in this romantic triangle.

  This may have been a trial balloon. Years later Reagan claimed that he was made no serious offer to play Rick. Speculative casting was a common practice to attract publicity for a forthcoming film.

  The producer Hal Wallis wanted to cast Bogie in the lead, Jack Warner preferring Raft. Warner prevailed.

  Raft at the time was trying to escape the taint of gangster roles. In the films of the 40s, the Nazis had become the gangsters of the 1930s. Raft felt that Rick Blaine, an ex-smuggler, was really a gangster. “The script doesn’t make clear why Rick can’t return to America,” Raft said. “Obviously he was involved in some illegal activity. I won’t do it.”

  But after turning it down, he had second thoughts. He then notified Wallis that he would accept the role. It was too late. Warner had agreed to let Wallis cast Bogie.

  “I had many regrets after I gave Bogart the role of Rick, the slick casino owner, in Casablanca,” Raft said. “But the part caught up with me in Cuba. In Background to Danger, the movie I shot in Havana, I starred in a real-life drama that was more exciting& than Casablanca. It had a live revolution as a background, and the bullets in the machine guns pointed at my head were real.”

  The screenplay for Casablanca was based on an unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.

  Lisbon was the major port of embarkation for refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. The playwrights in their first draft set the scene in Portugal, but later transferred it to Casablanca, which was also one of the key stops for refugees on the run.

  Samuel Marx had pitched the property to Mayer as an ideal vehicle for Clark Gable. Alison had envisioned him for the role. “Gable as Rick was my concept of a guy that I would like. I hated Humphrey Bogart. I thought he was a common drunk.”

  Warners did not immediately get first dibs on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s. Samuel Marx of MGM wanted to offer Burnett and Alison $5,000, but Louis B. Mayer vetoed the idea.

  The script of the play arrived on the Warner lot on December 8, 1941, one day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

  The first script analyst at Warner who read the play, Stephen Karnot, called it “sophisticated hokum.” In his words, “It will play.” He sent it up to Irene Lee, head of the Warner story department. She liked the script and shot it at once to Jack Warner, who also liked it. He agreed to pay $20,000, the highest amount ever paid for an unproduced script.

  Thinking of the success of the film, Algiers (1938), Warner had already ordered that the play be retitled Casablanca.

  After several attempts to get a workable screenplay, Hal Wallis had long talks with& Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, two brothers. These writers were known on the lot as “The Boys” or else “Phil and Julie.”

  Identical twins, they were both bald and rather lanky, but each of them was known for their snappy dialogue, as demonstrated when they were called in “to fix” Yankee Doodle Dandy for James Cagney in his role of George M.& Cohan.

  In its simplest format, the Epsteins created their romance/drama set in unoccupied Morocco during the early days of World War II. An American expatriate, Rick Blaine (Bogie), meets a former lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), with unforeseen complications. She is in essence torn between two lovers. Paul Henreid, as Victor Laszlo, would later be cast to fill the triangle.

  To bail out the brothers, screenwriter Howard Koch was called in to develop a screenplay from scratch.

  As a writer, Koch had already had a moment of notoriety. He was known for his dramatization of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. That broadcast had convinced thousands of Americans that the country was being invaded by Martians.

  Later, writers Casey Robinson and Lenore J. Coffee were asked to read both the Koch version of the play and the Epstein version. These two new writers found merit in both scripts. But Robinson beefed up the romantic angle.

  Wallis considered casting Hedy Lamarr as Ilsa, because of her success in the film Algiers. In the final negotiation, MGM refused to release her. Hedy also objected to the unfinished script.

  Months later, when both Bergman and Bogie were overseas entertaining the troops, Hedy, along with Alan Ladd in the Rick role, agreed to perform the screen drama in a 1944 radio show for the Lux Radio Theater.

  A classic French beauty, Michèle Morgan was a serious contender for the role of Isla. Her enigmatic features and gloomy allure invited comparisons to a young Greta Garbo. Although she would be cast opposite Bogie in his upcoming Passage to Marseille, she did not click with American audiences. After the war, she’d go home to France where she became one of her country’s most popular leading ladies.

  Her asking price of $55,000 was too high, since it was more than twice what Warner would have to pay Bergman.

  Years later, when asked how she felt losing out on the pivotal role of Isla Lund in Casablanca, Morgan issued an enigmatic statement: “A woman can always deceive a hundred men but not a single& woman.”

  The Epstein twins were sent to meet with David Selznick to persuade him to lend the services of Ingrid Bergman, whom he had under exclusive contract. Although the twins were articulate on paper, they bumbled the plot, which had not really been worked out in their minds, when they had to deliver it face-to-face to Selznick.

  “ Casablanca is going to have a lot of schmaltz—lots of atmosphere, cigarette smoke, guitar music,” Julius Epstein told Selznick. After nearly half an hour of describing the movie to a seemingly bored Selznick, Julius finally gave up and said, “Oh, what the hell! It’s a lot of shit like Algiers.”

  “When Selznick stopped slurping his luncheon soup and nodded, I knew we had Bergman,” Epstein later claimed.

  Selznick agreed to lend Bergman to Warners for $25,000. It was a barter agreement. To sweeten the deal, Selznick agreed to lend Bergman for eight weeks in return for eight weeks of services from Olivia de Havilland. Selznick never used De Havilland but lent her to RKO to make the lackluster Government Girl instead.&

  “I didn’t want to be Ilsa in Casablanca,” Bergman said. “There wasn’t that much for me to do.”

  But since she was under exclusive contract to Selznick, she had to go through with the deal; otherwise she’d face suspension. To prepare for the role and to understand Bogie’s acting style, Bergman watched The Maltese Falcon six times.

  Selznick wasn’t as dumb as this exchange with the Epsteins made him appear. At the time, there was fear that Sweden might be joining forces with the Axis to fight the West. A Swedish actress might be viewed as an anathema to American audiences.& Greta Garbo had already retired and didn’t face that problem.

  Bergman was a politically naïve young woman when she filmed Die vier Gessellen ( The Four Companions ) in Germany. One of her biographers, Charlotte Chandler, claimed she at first interpreted the Nazis as only “a temporary aberration—too foolish to be taken seriously.”

  “Germany will not start a war,” Bergman claimed. The actress later had a life-long guilt because she had so horribly misjudged the situation and was so slow to see the evils of Hitler.

  Her estranged first husband, Petter Lindstrom, in a later attempt to embarrass his wife, claimed that she had been taken to a Nazi rally in Hamburg and later praised Josef Goebbels, the Third Reich’s minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda, for giving “a fantastic speech.” That was corroborated in another Bergman biography, Laurence Leamer’s As Times Go By.

  Amazingl
y, even after Germany invaded Poland and launched World War II in 1939, Bergman turned down a movie role in So Ends Our Night, which was based on an Erich Maria Remarque novel. Allegedly, the actress claimed that the script was “too anti-German.”

  Selznick wisely suspected that Bergman was a public relations time bomb waiting to explode. If word of her pro-German sentiments got out, it would no doubt have seriously& damaged her career. As it turned out, the script for Casablanca was perfect for her, portraying her as the supportive wife of a resistance fighter.

  Weeks later, an anti-Nazi like Bogie told Peter Lorre, Michael Curtiz, and others that he was the one who “turned Ingrid’s head around politically” during their time together.

  “I educated her and warned her never to be heard speaking German again,” Bogie claimed. “I told her, ‘If it’s called for you to speak German in a script, turn it down. And don’t wear one of those new bathing suits seen at the North Sea resorts, where a Fraülein has the image of a swastika covering her vagina.’”

  Warner and Wallis assigned their temperamental Hungarian director, Michael Curtiz, to helm Casablanca. “Curtiz has tamed Bogie before,” Warner told Wallis. “I’m sure he can do it again. After The Maltese Falcon, Bogie is getting a little& too big for his breeches.”

  Bogie had long wanted to work with Bergman, and in Casablanca at long last he had the opportunity. He asked Geraldine Fitzgerald, who had appeared with him in the Bette Davis picture, Dark Victory, to set up a luncheon, since she knew Bergman.

  The cover-up of what actually went on between Bogie and Bergman may have begun at that luncheon. Fitzgerald would later claim that the two stars of Casablanca rarely spoke to each other off camera, which suggested that they were feuding, which they were not.

  Bergman herself may have asked Fitzgerald to spread that false story. At any rate, Fitzgerald was not in Casablanca and was not privy to what went on privately among the actors.

  During the luncheon, Bergman confessed that the role she really wanted was that of Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), which she eventually won, appearing with Gary Cooper, who became her temporary lover.

  At the luncheon, Bergman pointedly asked Bogie, “How can I play Ilsa in Casablanca ? I’m supposed to be the world’s most beautiful woman. I look like a Swedish milkmaid.”

  “If that’s what you think you look like, I’m taking up a new profession—that of milking cows.”

  “Don’t be vulgar,” Bergman cautioned him. “I hardly know you.”

  “When you get to know me, we can get down and dirty together.”

  According to Fitzgerald, “The whole subject at lunch was how both Bogie and Ingrid could get out of making that movie. They thought the dialogue was ridiculous and the situations were unbelievable. I knew Bogie very well, and I think he wanted to join forces with Bergman, to make sure they both said the same things.”

  There’s another problem here. Fitzgerald’s summary of the lunch with Bergman and Bogie may have accurately stated her position, but it left out the fact that Bogie had campaigned for months to play Rick Blaine. Why would he suddenly want to bolt from Casablanca ?

  Because Paul Henreid was not available at& the time shooting began, Wallis and Curtiz considered Herbert Marshall, Dean Jagger, and Joseph Cotten for the role of Victor.

  Henreid did not want to play Victor Lazlo, fearing that being placed in a secondary character role would ruin his burgeoning career as a romantic lead.

  With a cast not fully decided, but with Bogie and Bergman in tow, principal photography began in May of 1942 on Casablanca.

  The film’s scriptwriting team, which was composed of five writers, had not yet come up with a suitable script. Many problems in the plot had not been worked out. Some loopholes in the plot were never answered even after the film was released—for example, why had Rick been banished from America?

  ***

  On the first day of shooting, Curtiz received a telegram from Warner. “These are turbulent days and I know you will finish Casablanca in tops seven weeks. I am depending on you to be the old Curtiz I know you to be, and I am positive you are going to make one great picture.”

  Bogie was rushing through the film because he had agreed to star in Sahara for Columbia in return for a Cary Grant commitment.

  “Bogie told Curtiz, “The audience won’t believe that a looker like Ingrid would fall for a guy with a mug like mine.”

  Later, after viewing the first rushes with her, he changed his mind. “When the camera moves in on that Bergman face, and she’s saying she loves you, it would make anybody look romantic.”

  Spencer Tracy advised Bogie, “This is the first time you’ve played the romantic lead against a major star. You stand still and always make her come to you. Curtiz probably won’t notice it. If she complains, you can tell her it’s in the script. You’ve got something she wants, so she has to come to you.”

  The Blaine in the name of Bogie’s character came from Amory Blaine, the romantic hero of This Side of Paradise (1920), the first novel of F. Scott& Fitzgerald.

  In spite of his initial complaints, Bogie was actually pleased with the role, yet didn’t want to admit it to anybody. In the first draft script sent to him, a reader had made this notation about the character of Rick Blaine. “Two parts Hemingway, one part F. Scott Fitzgerald, a dash of Christ.”

  Bogie did demand that his character be made stronger. “The world is at war, and Rick is crying in his champagne about some whore he dumped in Paris.”

  The difference in height between his stars caused some problems for Curtiz. Bergman towered over Bogie, who stood on a box in some scenes or else sat on a pillow. In one scene which was shot while Bogie and Bergman were sitting together on a couch—the famous “franc for your thoughts” moment—Curtiz directed Bergman “to slouch down.” Bogie also had to wear platform shoes in some scenes.

  Rick’s Café Americain in the movie was modeled after the Hotel El Minzah in Tangier, former retreat of such vacationing stars as Errol Flynn and Marlene Dietrich.

  Because of wartime restrictions on building supplies, Rick’s Café was one of the few original sets custom-built for the film. The rest of the sets were recycled from previous Warner Brothers films. As an example, the set which depicted the Paris train station was recycled from Now, Voyager (1942), which had starred Paul Henreid and Bette Davis.

  Wartime restrictions also made it impossible for an actual airport to be used after dark because of security reasons. To solve that problem, Curtiz had a small cardboard cutout airplane made, which he filmed in forced perspective. To create the illusion that the craft was full-sized, he hired midgets to portray the crew preparing the plane for the famous take-off with Ilsa’s immortal goodbye to Rick.

  At last, Bergman came together with her director, Curtiz, former circus juggler, strongman, and trampoline artist. His directional advice about how to play Ilsa was simple: “Just be yourself, Ingrid Bergman. Bogie will be himself, like the asshole could be anything else.”

  But when she showed up the next day for filming, she encountered a very different personality. “Fortunately,” she later recalled, “I’d already made Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so I knew about dual personalities.”

  When Bergman appeared on the set, Curtiz& attacked her. “You’re playing a decent woman, not a whore from 10th Avenue. Take off pounds of makeup. No lipstick.”

  Bergman pestered Curtiz, asking him, “Which man am I in love with?” Since the director hadn’t decided, he told her to “play it in between.”

  Until deep into the shoot, Curtiz and the writers could not make up their minds about how the film should end. Bergman later said, “I never knew from day to day which man I was in love with, Rick or Victor.”

  Curtiz discussed with his writers the possibility of having Rick run away with Ilsa. But he was warned that the censors might object. After all, Ilsa was married to Victor. Finally it was decided that Ilsa, although still in love with Rick, would remain with her husband.
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  The third lead, Paul Henreid, reluctantly showed up on the set long after shooting had begun.

  He was about to enter the pantheon of film history for his portrait in Now, Voyager. In the film, he had put two cigarettes at once to his lips, lit them, and passed one on to Bette Davis. A legend was born.

  Rivals on the screen, Bogie and Henreid did not get along. Bogie told Peter Lorre that Henreid was a “prima donna.” Both Bogie and Henreid were gentlemen and managed to conceal their contempt for each other, although denouncing& each other privately. On the surface, they seemed like friends and even played chess& together between takes.

  Henreid told Bogie that when he’d appeared in a 1940 British thriller, Night Train to Munich, he got a lot of fan mail from women asking “Who was that cute Nazi in the movie?” It is believed that Henreid had some Jewish ancestors, hence his flight from Nazi-occupied territory.

  Although Bogie was all smiles playing chess with Henreid, when the actor disappeared into his dressing room, Bogie attacked him to Curtiz. “Henreid is the biggest case of self-idolatry since I last fucked Hedy Lamarr. After lighting that cigarette for Bette, he pictures himself a matinee idol.”

  “Wait a minute, you slimy son of a bitch,” Curtiz said. “You fucked the Austrian bitch? I saw Ecstasy. When she ran bare-assed naked, I got a hard-on.”

  “She called me one night, and we got together,” Bogie said. “At the time, as you know, she was up for the role of Ilsa. She wanted to see if we had any sexual chemistry together. We did. And how! Her pussy is top of the line. I heard she once fucked both Hitler and Mussolini—not at the same time, of course. With Hedy, it may be the only time in my life where I had sloppy seconds after the Führer.”