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Article featured in Beijing This Month, March 2005
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Did You Know?

2005/03/01
Edited by Winnie Li, photos courtesy of IC

The Unfinished Script

Several days after Japanese aircraft bombed Pearl Harbour, a script reader at Warner Brothers heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech on the Japanese attack. Inspired, he decided to choose an anti-fascist script, which just happened to drop onto his desk in the shape of Everybody Comes to Rick's. Producer Hal B. Wallis and director Michael Curtiz fell in love with the script instantly, but decided it needed a lot of work - including a new title.

Pity for Ronald Reagan?

An advertisement made before the shooting of Casablanca showed Ronald Reagan in the lead role. Reagan's replacement by Humphrey Bogart was surely one of cinema history's happiest turnarounds.

Three Endings

Three alternatives were still under consideration as shooting finished. In one, Rick is arrested after helping Ilsa and her husband Victor Laszlo flee; in another, Ilsa and Rick flee together after Laszlo is killed. The final, famous ending was allegedly dreamed up by screenwriting twins Philip and Julius Epstein as they were driving toward Beverly Glen late one night. They suddenly both had the same thought, turning to each other and chorusing, "Round up the usual suspects!"

 



 
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