Casablanca- background to the film

Casablanca is the 1942 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The film has achieved worldwide popularity since then, having also won three Oscars and been nominated in five additional categories.

Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an Americanactor and cultural icon. In 1997, Entertainment Weekly magazine named him the number one movie legend of all time. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked "Bogie" the greatest male star.

After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadwayproductions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart also turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. He had been acclaimed for his performance in the play, and his friend Leslie Howard saw to it that he reprised his role in the 1936 film version. Despite rave reviews, Bogart was typecast as a gangster in B-movies. His breakthrough came in 1941, with High Sierra (though he still played a criminal) and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca finally raised him to the peak of his profession and at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side.

Bergman, named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden, was born in Stockholm, Sweden on August 29, 1915 to a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman, and a German mother, Friedel Adler Bergman.^[2] When she was three years old, her mother died. Her father passed away when she was thirteen. She was then sent to live with an aunt, who died of heart complications only six months later. Afterwards she was raised by another aunt and uncle, who had five children.

Bergman joined Humphrey Bogart in the 1942 classic film Casablanca, which remains her best-known role. Bergman did not consider Casablanca to be one of her favorite performances. "I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart." About Bogart, she said "I never really knew him. I kissed him, but I didn't know him

The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's then-unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's. The Warner Bros. story analyst who read the play, Stephen Karnot, called it (approvingly) "sophisticated hokum", and story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal Wallis to buy the rights for $20,000, the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play. The project was renamed Casablanca, apparently in imitation of the 1938 hit Algiers. Shooting began on May 25, 1942 and was completed on August 3. The film cost a total of $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget), not exceptionally high, but above average for the time