CASABLANCA — One of My 3 All-Time Favorite Films

The film cost approximately $950,000, some $100,000 over budget. The initial $20,000 paid for the screen rights to an un-produced play called Everybody Comes to Rick's. It raked in a sum of $3,700,000 during the first year of release.

Rick never says "Play it again, Sam." He dictates to Sam: "You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can take it, I can take it so Play it!". Ilsa says "Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By'.

The first shot of Rick sees him playing chess, a favorite game of Humphrey Bogart's.

In the famous scene where the Marseillaise is sung over the German song Watch on the Rhine, many of the extras had real tears in their eyes; a large number of them were actual refugees from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were overcome by the emotions the scene brought out.

Many of the actors who played the Nazis were in fact German Jews who had escaped from Nazi Germany.

At a salary of $25,000 for five weeks' work, Conrad Veidt was the highest-paid actor on the set and on loan from MGM.

Claude Rains was a non-smoker. In most of his scenes he is smoking a cigarette. He never inhales, however, using the trick of drawing the smoke into his mouth, holding it for a moment, then puffing it out without ever drawing it into his lungs.

Dooley Wilson (Sam) was, in fact, the only member of the cast to have ever actually visited the city of Casablanca. Wilson was a professional drummer who faked playing the piano. As the music was recorded at the same time as the film, the piano playing was actually a recording of a performance by Elliot Carpenter who was playing behind a curtain but who was positioned such that Dooley could watch, and copy, his hand movements. Sidenote: Wilson was borrowed from Paramount at $500 a week.

"Rick's Café Américain" was modeled after Hotel El Minzah in Tangiers.  It was one of the few original sets built for the film, the rest were all recycled from other Warner Brothers productions due to wartime restrictions on building supplies.

To prepare for working with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman watched The Maltese Falcon (1941) many times.

Early in the production, Jack L. Warner offered the role of Rick Blaine to George Raft, but he actor turned it down. As the shooting script took shape, producer Hal B. Wallis began to envision Humphrey Bogart in the role. Since Bogart was under contract to Warner Bros. the role was assigned to him by Wallis, but after Bogart had been cast in the role, Raft reconsidered his decision and contacted Warner to say he had decided to accept the part after all. After consulting with Wallis, Warner decided to support Wallis  (Ironically, Raft turned down two previous roles which Bogart subsequently accepted: Roy "Mad Dog" Earle in High Sierra (1941), and Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Producer Hal B. Wallis nearly made the character Sam a female. Hazel Scott, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald were considered for the role.