Bonham’s TCM Presents … There’s No Place Like Hollywood auction on November 24th in New York is going to be the entertainment memorabilia event of the year. The sale includes many headline items but one the highlights for us is the Piano from Casablanca on which Sam Plays “As Time Goes By”. Included below is a link to a YouTube clip of Casablanca and the “As Time Goes By” scene. A classic – must go and watch it again!
About the Piano
Warner Bros., 1942. A “studio” 58-key piano on wheels, with wood and plasticine keys, likely manufactured by Kohler & Campbell, 1927, serial # 252636, with label of Richardson’s of Los Angeles to interior case, and with “FNP” (for First National Pictures, which merged with Warner Bros. in 1927) marking to rear of piano. With original stool. Lid of piano hinged at center as is usual with uprights, but also entirely detached from upper case and instead secured with hook and eye (altered for the production of Casablanca so that Rick can open the piano lid from the rear and hide the transit papers). One-inch notch to center left piano leg (visible onscreen) and three small holes to piano lid (also visible onscreen). Petrified chewing gum wad stuck to underside of keyboard with faint impression of a fingerprint visible under magnification. Moroccan paint restoration executed in the early 1980s under the direction of Warner Bros. studio. Together with a signed photograph of Dooley Wilson as Sam at the piano and a copy of the film.
39 x 41 x 22 in.
Sam’s piano is central to both the plot and the overall mood ofCasablanca. Many of the major plot machinations take place on or near the piano, and Sam’s tasteful melodies frame every scene in Rick’s. We hear the strains of “It Had to Be You” as we first enter Rick’s Café Américain, following the camera past Sam (Dooley Wilson) leading the big band, and then focusing on the variously desperate European refugees who haunt the cafe. It’s Rick’s place, but Sam is the star attraction (earning 10% of the profits, we later learn), and his music dominates the room. Moments after the oily Ugarte (Peter Lorre) gives Rick (Humphrey Bogart) the transit papers to hold, Sam leads the cafe in a boisterous rendition of the novelty tune, “Knock on Wood.” In the middle of this performance, Rick casually walks up to the piano, opens the lid from the rear and slides the stolen transit papers inside.
About 12 minutes later, Victor (Paul Henreid) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) walk into Rick’s, and Sam again is at the piano, this time playing a solo tune; he falters just a bit as he catches sight of Ilsa. Moments later, Ilsa approaches him and asks him to play “As Time Goes By.” He does so, stopping only when Rick comes storming out to say, “Sam, I thought I told you never to play that song….” Sam does play the song a few scenes later, at Rick’s behest (“Play it!” Rick snarls, not “Play it again, Sam,” as is often thought) as Rick drowns his sorrows (“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine!”), and remembers his brief, passionate affair with Ilsa in Paris.
The piano also plays a role in the greater tension between occupier and occupied: late in the film, when Sam and the band are on break, a group of German soldiers commandeer the piano and sing and play “Wacht am Rhein” loudly. In a bold move, Victor Laszlo crosses to the band and demands that they play the French anthem “La Marseillaise,” and soon the band, the refugees and the staff have drowned out the Germans with their patriotic song.
