This Casablanca trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the 1942 Warner Bros. classic from every angle: the play it was bought from, the twins and the third writer who shared its screenplay Oscar, the refugee actors who filled Rick's cafe, the rushed premiere timed to the Allied landings, the cardboard aeroplane in the fog, the piano that sold for millions, the colorization fight of the 1980s and the famous line that is never spoken. A handful of questions leave the studio for the real Casablanca: its name, its mosque, its port and the 1943 conference held there. It is built for classic-film fans, pub quiz teams and anyone who has watched the airport scene more times than they will admit. The early questions are gentle; the later ones get into contracts, budgets and studio politics. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and primary sources before publishing, so the explanations can be trusted when the table argues.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays nightclub owner Rick Blaine?
Humphrey Bogart
Studio records show producer Hal Wallis wanted him from the start, despite George Raft's later claim that he turned the part down.
Q 02Which Swedish actress plays Ilsa Lund?
Ingrid Bergman
Wallis borrowed her from David O. Selznick by lending Olivia de Havilland in exchange.
Q 03Which song does Ilsa ask Sam to play when she first walks into the cafe?
As Time Goes By
Composer Max Steiner disliked the tune and wanted to replace it, but Bergman had already cut her hair for her next film so the scenes could not be reshot.
Q 04Which line, closely associated with the film, is never actually spoken in it?
Play it again, Sam
Ilsa says "Play it, Sam," and Rick later demands "Play it!" but the word "again" never appears; Woody Allen borrowed the misquote for a 1972 film title.
Q 05Rick's Cafe Americain is located in which country's territory when the film opens in December 1941?
Vichy French Morocco
The filmmakers deliberately set the story just before Pearl Harbor to make Rick's neutrality, and his eventual choice, more believable.
Q 06Which anthem does Victor Laszlo order the house band to play to drown out the German officers?
La Marseillaise
The Germans were originally to sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied, but it was still under copyright outside the Allied countries, so Die Wacht am Rhein was used instead.
Q 07The Herman Hupfeld song that Ilsa asks Sam to play was written for which 1931 Broadway musical?
Everybody's Welcome
Herman Hupfeld wrote it for the Broadway show, where Frances Williams sang it; Rudy Vallee's 1931 recording became a number-one hit eleven years later thanks to the film.
Q 08Which document, allowing free travel through occupied Europe, does the whole plot revolve around?
Letters of transit
Joan Alison invented them as a MacGuffin for the original play; depending on the listener, Ugarte says they were signed by either General Weygand or General de Gaulle.
Q 09Who directed the film?
Michael Curtiz
Wallis's first choice was actually William Wyler, who was unavailable, so he turned to his close friend instead.
Q 10The screenplay was adapted from an unproduced stage play with what title?
Everybody Comes to Rick's
In the play, the Ilsa character is an American named Lois Meredith and Rick is a lawyer; the whole thing takes place inside the cafe.
Q 11How much did Warner Bros. pay for the film rights to the play in January 1942?
$20,000
At the time it was the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play, roughly $330,000 in today's money.
Q 12Twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein shared screenplay credit with which third writer?
Howard Koch
The three never worked in the same room; the twins were paid $30,416 while their colleague earned $4,200, and Casey Robinson did three weeks of uncredited rewrites.
Q 13The Epstein twins left the script early in 1942 to work on which Frank Capra project?
The Why We Fight series
Q 21How did the crew make the aeroplane in the final scene look full-sized?
A cardboard plane with little person extras, hidden by fog
The fog was there specifically to hide the unconvincing model.
Q 22Bogart's leading lady was taller than him. By roughly how much?
Two inches
She claimed the director had Bogart stand on blocks or sit on cushions in their scenes together.
Q 23The film's premiere was rushed to capitalize on which real-world event?
The Allied landings in North Africa
They left against Warner Bros.' wishes for about a month; when they returned, the studio put them straight back on Casablanca.
Q 14Who plays Captain Louis Renault, the corrupt prefect of police?
Claude Rains
The role earned him one of his four career nominations for Best Supporting Actor, none of which he won.
Q 15Which actor plays the Nazi Major Strasser?
Conrad Veidt
A German refugee who fled the Nazis with his Jewish wife, he was the highest-paid member of the cast and died of a heart attack on a golf course months after the release.
Q 16Which Peter Lorre character is arrested after killing two German couriers for the papers?
Ugarte
He is killed in custody without revealing that Rick has the papers, which is what sets the rest of the story in motion.
Q 17Sydney Greenstreet's character Signor Ferrari runs which rival establishment?
The Blue Parrot
Producer Wallis insisted on a real parrot for the bar set, part of the attention to detail Roger Ebert credited him for.
Q 18Dooley Wilson, who plays Sam, only mimed the piano. What was his real instrument?
Drums
The piano parts were performed by Jean Plummer, and Wallis even considered dubbing over Wilson's singing after shooting wrapped.
Q 19Which future US president was falsely rumored, via an early press release, to be cast as Rick?
Ronald Reagan
The studio already knew he was heading into the Army when the release went out, and he was never seriously considered.
Q 20Where was the film shot?
Almost entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank
The only location work was Strasser's arrival and close-ups of the plane at Van Nuys Airport; the Paris street was a redressed set built for The Desert Song.
The premiere was at New York's Hollywood Theater on November 26, 1942, less than three weeks after the landings; the Office of War Information then blocked screenings for troops in North Africa.
Q 24The general release on January 23, 1943 was timed to coincide with which meeting in the city?
The Casablanca Conference
Churchill and Roosevelt emerged with the demand for unconditional surrender; Stalin stayed home citing the fighting at Stalingrad.
Q 25How many Academy Awards did the film win from its eight nominations?
Three
Bogart lost Best Actor and Rains lost Best Supporting Actor; the wins were for the picture, the director and the screenplay.
Q 26When Best Picture was announced, who rushed on stage and accepted ahead of producer Hal Wallis?
Jack L. Warner
Wallis was blocked in his row by the studio boss's family and later wrote that forty years on he still had not recovered from the shock; he quit the studio that April.
Q 27Which line did Wallis choose to close the film, dubbed by Bogart a month after shooting ended?
"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
The larceny line was the other candidate in Wallis's telegram to editor Owen Marks; he settled the choice two weeks later.
Q 28Where does Renault suggest he and Rick go at the end of the film?
Brazzaville
The proposed sequel took that city as its title and was to bring back Bogart and Greenstreet, but it was never made.
Q 29According to Julius Epstein, where were he and his brother when they hit on the idea of Renault ordering the roundup that resolves the ending?
Driving in a car
The Production Code forbade showing a wife leaving her husband for another man, so the question was never whether Ilsa would go with Laszlo, only how.
Q 30Which 1995 neo-noir film indirectly took its title from Renault's order at the end of the film?
The Usual Suspects
The same line was voted number 32 on the AFI's list of the 100 greatest movie quotes.