Casablanca Trivia
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This Casablanca trivia quiz has 98 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 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays nightclub owner Rick Blaine in Casablanca?
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart. George Raft later said he had turned the role down, but studio memos show Raft asked for it and was refused; the producer wanted Bogart all along.
Q 02Which Swedish actress plays Ilsa Lund in Casablanca?
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman. She was under contract to David O. Selznick, and the producer got her only by lending him Olivia de Havilland in exchange.
Q 03Which song does Ilsa ask Sam to play when she first walks into Rick's café in Casablanca?
As Time Goes By
As Time Goes By. Herman Hupfeld wrote it for a 1931 Broadway show, and the film turned the old tune into a bigger hit than it had ever been.
Q 04Which famous line associated with Casablanca is never actually spoken in the film?
Play it again, Sam
Play it again, Sam. Ilsa says "Play it once, Sam" and "Play it, Sam"; the misquote stuck anyway, and Woody Allen borrowed it for the title of a 1972 film.
Q 05When Casablanca opens in December 1941, Rick's Café Américain stands in which territory?
Vichy French Morocco
Vichy French Morocco. France had fallen, but its Vichy government still ran the protectorate, which is why the Nazis in the café must lean on a French police captain.
Q 06In Casablanca, which anthem does Victor Laszlo order the house band to play to drown out the German officers?
La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise. Many of the extras were real refugees from Nazi Europe, and witnesses on the set saw them weeping as they sang.
Q 07Which words complete Rick's Casablanca lament, 'Of all the ___ in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine'?
Gin joints
Gin joints. Rick says it drunk at a table after closing time, then makes Sam play the very song he had banned from the café.
Q 08In Casablanca, what are the stolen papers that everyone is after called?
Letters of transit
Letters of transit. No such documents ever existed: they were invented for the stage play the film is based on, and co-writer Julius Epstein admitted the device was simply made up.
Q 09Which Yankee Doodle Dandy director also made Casablanca?
Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz. He got the job only after first choice William Wyler proved unavailable; the Hungarian never mastered English, yet was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors.
Q 10Casablanca was adapted from an unproduced stage play with what title?
Everybody Comes to Rick's
Everybody Comes to Rick's. Its authors sold every right to the story for $20,000, and when they sued decades later to win their characters back, the court ruled against them.
Q 11Closing Rick's café in Casablanca on a pretext, Captain Renault declares himself 'shocked, shocked' to find what going on?
Gambling
Gambling. A croupier promptly hands Renault his winnings, and he pockets them with a thank-you before ordering everybody out.
Q 12Which War of the Worlds radio writer shared Casablanca's writing credit with the Epstein twins?
Howard Koch
Howard Koch. He and the twins never wrote in the same room: he was hired while they were away in Washington, and in the 1950s Hollywood blacklisted him.
Q 13The Epstein twins left the Casablanca script early in 1942 to work on which director's Why We Fight war films?
Frank Capra
Q 21For Casablanca's foggy final scene, the crew used little people as mechanics beside a scaled-down mock-up of what?
The airplane
The airplane. It was a small mock-up standing on a studio soundstage, and the little people around it kept it in perspective, so on screen it reads as a full-size airliner.
Q 22Resistance leader Victor Laszlo, hunted by the Nazis in Casablanca, comes from which country?
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia. When Laszlo tells Major Strasser he is a Czechoslovakian, the Nazi snaps back that he is now a subject of the German Reich.
Q 23Casablanca's premiere was rushed forward to capitalize on which real-world event?
The Allied landings in North Africa
Frank Capra. The twins went to Washington to write his Army propaganda series, and the Casablanca script was still unfinished when the cameras rolled.
Q 14Who plays Captain Louis Renault, Casablanca's cheerfully corrupt prefect of police?
Claude Rains
Claude Rains. His Hollywood debut was The Invisible Man, a title role that keeps his face hidden, bandaged or invisible, for almost the whole film.
Q 15Which Cabinet of Dr. Caligari star plays Casablanca's Major Strasser?
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt. He had fled Hitler's Germany with his Jewish wife in 1933, and in wartime Hollywood he was cast again and again as a Nazi.
Q 16Which Peter Lorre character in Casablanca is arrested after killing two German couriers for the papers?
Ugarte
Ugarte. He dies in police custody without revealing that he left the papers with Rick, which is what puts Rick at the centre of everyone's schemes.
Q 17In Casablanca, Sydney Greenstreet's Signor Ferrari runs which rival establishment?
The Blue Parrot
The Blue Parrot. Ferrari opens by offering to buy Rick's café, and Sam along with it, and at the end Rick finally sells him the place.
Q 18Dooley Wilson, who plays the pianist Sam in Casablanca, was really a professional on which instrument?
Drums
Drums. He could not play a note on the piano, so he mimed at the keyboard while a pianist played off camera.
Q 19An early studio press release wrongly announced which actor as a star of Casablanca?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan. He was already due for Army service and was never a real candidate; the studio's publicists were simply keeping their contract actors' names in print.
Q 20Casablanca was filmed almost entirely in which place?
Burbank, California
Burbank, California. Even the fog-bound airport farewell was staged on a soundstage; the one trip outside was to Van Nuys Airport, for Major Strasser's arrival.
The Allied landings in North Africa. The studio even planned a new final scene showing the invasion; David O. Selznick, shown the film, urged it to leave the ending alone, and it did.
Q 24At the end of Casablanca, Ilsa and Victor Laszlo leave for which neutral capital?
Lisbon
Lisbon. Neutral Portugal was the last stop on the refugee trail out of Europe: from its port, the lucky ones could sail on to America.
Q 25When Casablanca won Best Picture, which studio boss rushed on stage to accept ahead of producer Hal Wallis?
Jack L. Warner
Jack L. Warner. Wallis, blocked in his row by the mogul's family, could only sit back down; within weeks the furious producer had left the studio.
Q 26In Casablanca's closing line, Rick tells Captain Renault 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful' what?
Friendship
Friendship. None of the credited writers wrote it: producer Hal Wallis supplied the famous last line himself.
Q 27At the end of Casablanca, Renault suggests he and Rick join the Free French in which city?
Brazzaville
Brazzaville. It was Free France's headquarters in Africa, and early in 1943 the studio announced a sequel named after it, which was never made.
Q 28Renault's file on Rick in Casablanca says he ran guns to Ethiopia and fought for the Loyalists in which war?
The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War. Rick shrugs that he was well paid both times; Renault replies that the winning side would have paid him much better, proof that he is a sentimentalist at heart.
Q 29Which 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.
Q 30Which Casablanca line ranks highest among the AFI's 100 movie quotes?
Here's looking at you, kid
Here's looking at you, kid. It ranks fifth on the list, yet the toast is probably not the screenwriters' work: the film's star is thought to have brought it to the role himself.