August 2, 1942…”Here’s Looking At You Kid” Is Immortalized On Film
74 years ago today, the final scene of “Casablanca” was filmed on Stage 21 at Warner Brothers. They also shot on Stage 04, Stage 05, Stage 06, Stage 07, Stage 08, Stage 09, Stage 11, Stage 12, Stage 14, Stage 17, Stage 18, Stage 25 and French Street on the backlot. Some of the sets used in “Casablanca”, were leftovers from “The Desert Song”, and “Now Voyager” with Bette Davis.
The whole picture was shot at Warner’s except for the sequence showing Major Strasser’s arrival, which was filmed at Van Nuys Airport, and a few short clips of stock footage views of Paris were added for effect.
This scene on the “runway” was purposefully over fogged to hide the deficiencies in the cardboard mock up of a Lockheed Electra which had very short extras around it to help cheat the proportionality.
Speaking of cheating, Bogart was two inches shorter than Bergman, so…like in this scene, he wore wooden block lifts on his shoes, and sat on pillows to hide the difference.
This scene also gave us, “We’ll always have Paris” too. It is thought that the “Play it again Sam” line was delivered on Stage 11. -Bobby Ellerbee
I always like hearing what stages were used on various productions…. but, in the early 70’s… the stages were all re-numbered…. I think there’s a list someplace of what stage became what…but, I don’t think any brain scans were done as to why a studio executive felt the need to change them…. .
Airplane in film was a Boeing 210 I believe. The Electra was a 4 engine turbo prop that didn’t exist when this film was made in 1941.
Sorry John, check out Lockheed Electra models 10,12, and 14, all produced in the 30’s..
Best movie.
Fantastic share.