There has been a number of rumors through the years that Bogart was not the studios choice to play the part of Rick Blaine. Other actors like Ronald Reagan or George Raft were considered first for the part. This simply is not true. Bogart was producer Hal B. Wallis' only choice to play Blaine. In fact, he was writing the part for Bogart. The rumor comes out of some old studio publicity done at the time to promote various actors. 
        Born Humphrey DeForest Bogart on December 25, 1899 (there was a little controversy on the date) in New York City, the oldest of three. He was the son of a Manhattan surgeon and a magazine illustrator (in fact, she used a drawing of her baby Humphrey in a well-known ad campaign for Mellins Baby Food - not Gerber's, which debunks another myth). He had a tough childhood with both parents being alcoholics. Bogart was educated at Trinity School, in New York City and then was sent to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Though a poor student, Bogart was a lifelong reader. He could quote Plato, Pope, Ralph Waldo Emerson and over a thousand lines of Shakespeare. The hope was for Bogart to pursue a medical career like his father. This didn't work out as planned as he was expelled from Phillips Academy (for smoking) in 1918 and joined the U.S. Navy. According to one story, while in the Navy, he was wounded in the shelling of the Leviathan; the resulting partial paralysis caused his signature snarl and lisp (there are a number of other stories of how the injury occurred). From 1920 to 1922, he managed a stage company owned by family friend William S. Brady, performing a variety of tasks at Brady's film studio in New York. His acting career began shortly after this. His first role was portraying a Japanese butler (that must have been a stretch). It was his friend Spencer Tracy that gave him the nickname, "Bogie."
        1924, Bogart married his first wife, Helen Menken, which ended in divorce a year later (though they remained friends). In 1928, he married Mary Philips (who went on to appear in 20 movies - including A Farewell to Arms in 1932) and divorced her ten years later in 1938 when she refused to follow him from Broadway to Hollywood. Four months later, he married actress Mayo Methot (who appeared in 28 movies herself). This was a very tumultuous marriage. Their fights became famous and they became known as the "Battling Bogarts." During this time, Bogart bought a sailboat, which he named "Sluggy" after his hot-tempered wife. He divorced her in 1945 to marry actress Lauren Bacall. They had appeared together in To Have and Have Not in 1944 when she was 19 years old. Bogart and Bacall moved into a $160,000 white brick mansion in Holmby Hills, an exclusive neighborhood between Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. They would be happy together until his death. 
        After a number of small roles, Bogart's break came in 1936. Two years earlier, Bogart starred in the play Invitation to a Murder. Producer Arthur Hopkins saw the play and wanted Bogart when he chose to produce Robert E. Sherwood's new play, The Petrified Forest for Broadway. Bogart originaly thought he was better suited to play the part of the football player/gas attendent. However, he was cast in the role of escaped killer/gang leader Duke Mantee. The show, with Leslie Howard playing the lead, had 197 performances. Warner Bros. bought the screen rights to The Petrified Forest and signed up Leslie Howard. The studio wanted veteran actor Edward G. Robinson for the Duke Mantee role. Howard insisted that Bogart play Duke Mantee. When Warner Bros. saw that Howard would not budge, they gave in and gave him the role. Bogart was always grateful that Howard stuck up for him and later in 1952 named his only daughter, Leslie, after Howard (who had died during World War II). 
         This would be the start of a string of gangster/tough guy roles for Bogart along with a contract with Warner Brothers Studios. From 1936 to 1940, he appeared in 28 movies (averaging two a month), such as Angles with Dirty Faces with James Cagney (who shoots him in the movie). In his movie career as a tough guy/gangster, he went to the electric chair 12 times. He didn't like the roles he always got, such as Swing Your Lady and The Return of Doctor X, but in those days you couldn't choose the roles you played, you just did what the studio told you to do.
          In 1937, Bogart received a substantial leading role in Samuel Goldwyn's Dead End. He also appeared that year as Frank Taylor, his first lead in an "A" feature, in Warner Bros. anti-Klan, and in a bigger sense anti-Nazi, movie Black Legion in 1937.
          His big year came in 1941, when he played the part of the villain, Roy 'Mad Dog' Earle in Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (it also featured Bogart's own dog in the movie) which was written by Bogart's friend and drinking partner, John Huston and later as Sam Spade in the The Maltese Falcon. James Cagney and George Raft had both turned down Bogart's part in High Sierra; Raft didn't want to play a character who died at the end. Then Raft turned down the lead in John Huston's directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon. In this film, he would team up with future Casablanca co-stars Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (the first of four movies the three would appear in together). Finally, he didn't play the bad guy, but a tough detective who had a great line when he turned his murderess client (Mary Astor) in to the police, "I don't care who loves you. I won't play the sap for you! You killed Miles and you're going over for it. I hope they don't hang you by your sweet neck. If you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years and you'll come back to me. If they hang you, I'll always remember you." 
          The following year, at the age of 42, he was given his first serious romantic lead in Casablanca. He put a lot of himself into the character of Rick Blaine, the soured idealist, loner and hard-drinking man on the run from some mysterious past. Rick Blaine was even a chess player which Bogart was in real life (one level below master level). This was the only film that he and co-star Ingrid Bergman did together and he was paid $36,667. They had great onscreen chemistry, however, it ended there. Off the set, Bergman and Bogart hardly spoke during filming. She said later, "I kissed him but I never knew him." Bogart did make friends with other actors like Claude Rains, the sincere friendship that Rick and Louis have on set was very real between Bogart and Rains, and was already friends with Peter Lorre, his partner in crime when it came to playing practical jokes.
          Bogart earned an Oscar nomination in 1943, however he lost out to Hungarian actor Paul Lukas who starred in Watch on the Rhine. Bogart made three other films in 1943: Sahara, Action in the North Atlantic and Thank Your Lucky Stars. 
           In 1944, he played Jean Matrac, a former French journalist who is outraged by France's pre-war appeasement of the Nazi's and later wrongly convicted to Devil's Island in Passage to Marsailles which was produced by Hal B. Wallis and directed by Michael Curtiz. Later he escapes and eventually becomes a flyer in the Free-French Air Force and is killed in a bombing mission over Germany. In the movie, Bogart is again reunited with his Casablanca co-stars; Lorre, Rains, Dantine and Greenstreet.
           In 1947, he joined Lauren Bacall and others protesting the witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Bogart was not, however, prepared to deal with the industry pressure to abandon this campaign; within a year he disavowed his activities, retreating to his role as actor and apologizing for speaking out on politics.
           He played other great roles. In 1948, as Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Bogart played Frank McCloud in John Huston's Key Largo with Edward G. Robinson and his future wife Lauren Bacall - (the last of their four movies together). Casablanca actors Dan Seymour, Monte Blue and Alberto Morin also had parts in this movie. Bogart has a great line in this movie when he confronts gangster Johnny Rocco (Robinson) when they are all trapped in a hotel during a hurricane. He tells Rocco, who is becoming agitated over the storm, "You don't like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it." In 1949, he played a lawyer defending a young inner-city murder suspect in Knock on Any Door. In this movie, his former Casablanca co-star Dooley Wilson is back at the piano.
           In 1951, Bogart played gin-swilling riverboat captain Charlie Allnut in John Huston's The African Queen, where he starred with Catherine Hepburn, who he calls in the movie, a "crazy, psalm-singing, skinny old maid!", and won his only Academy Award (Oscar). He beat out other great actors like Marlon Brando (Streetcar Named Desire), Fredric March (Death of a Salesman) and Montgomery Clift (A Place in the Sun). Filming this movie caused him to travel to Africa where just about everyone in the cast came down with dysentery except Bogart and John Huston (Bogart claims it was because of all of the scotch he drank). This was the first of only five Technicolor films in which Bogart appeared in (the other color films included The Caine Mutiny, The Barefoot Contessa, We're No Angels, and The Left Hand of God.) Also in 1951, Bogart and Bacall co-starred in the syndicated radio drama Bold Venture, for which he was paid a reported $4,000 a week.
          In 1954, while feeling the effects of the throat cancer that would take his life, he portrayed Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny with Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray. Bogart was nominated for an Oscar for the third time for this role, but lost to Marlon Brando who starred in On the Waterfront. Later that year, he portrayed Linus in Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. In 1956, he appeared in his 75th and final movie portraying a has been sportswriter in The Harder They Fall with Rod Steiger. He was voted the Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly and ranked #1 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest screen actors. Two Bugs Bunny cartoons featured Bogart including one where Bugs Bunny decides to take a baby penguin back to the South Pole; at intervals throughout the cartoon, "Fred C. Dobbs" (Bogart's character in Treasure of the Sierra Madre) appears and asks Bugs to "help a poor American down on his luck." Bugs always flips him a coin and in a Bogart fashion says, "hit the road." In the end, the Bogart character gets the penguin.
        Bogart never took care of himself. He drank heavily and smoked unfiltered Chesterfields. As his health failed, he finally went to a doctor and found out he had cancer of the esophagus. He died in his sleep, at the age of 57, in his Hollywood home on January 14, 1957. His wife, Lauren Bacall, placed a small gold whistle in his coffin. This was from their first movie together when Bacall said the famous line to Bogart, "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? Just put your lips together, and blow." His funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal Church with musical selections played from Bogart's favorite composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Debussy. John Huston who gave the eulogy said, "He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be another like him." In 1999, the American Film Institute named Humphrey Bogart the Greatest Male Star of All Time. 
            Bogart's cremated ashes are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, in the Garden of Memory, Columbarium of Eternal Light (not accessible to the general public). He is a few feet away from actor Victor McLaglen (Gunga Din).
            There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn than at any other spot in the world. It is a huge cemetery (over 300 acres) that also contains Casablanca co-stars Sydney Greenstreet, S.Z. Sakell, John Qualan along with producer Hal B. Wallis, director Michael Curtiz and composer Max Steiner. Other famous actors and actresses like Joan Blondell, Clara Bow, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jimmy Stewart, Jean Harlow, Mary Pickford, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, George Burns & Gracie Allen, W.C. Fields, Sammy Davis Jr., Walt Disney, Red Skelton, Robert Young, Lon Chaney, Alan Ladd, Ted Knight, Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole and Chico Marx are also buried here. They even have a small chapel that they perform weddings in. Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman got married here in 1940.

       Claude Rains was short (5' 3") and was without conventional movie star looks, however he had a mesmerizing presence and a distinctive voice that kept getting him choice supporting roles in movies throughout a long career. 
         William Claude Rains was born in the Camberwell area of London on November 10, 1889, the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains (who appeared in a number of British films himself). His formal education ended in the second grade and shortly later started his stage career, first appearing in 1900 at age 11. He came to America in 1913, but returned to Britain at the outbreak of the First World War. He joined a Scottish regiment and during World War I fought in France where he was gassed at Vimy Ridge in Northern France and remained almost blind in one eye for the rest of his life. Rains retired from the army with the rank of captain. 
        Rains entered The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where he began his acting career. Later Rains taught at the institution, working with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, among others. Rains returned to the United States in the 1920's and worked as a leading man in New York Theatre Guild productions.
         Ironically his first major role in a movie almost turned him into another horror film actor like Boris Karloff , but he rose above this to become more of a character actor. During his many years at Warner Brothers he became the studio's busiest and most versatile character actor, at his best playing cultured villains. 
          In 1936, he played Napoleon Bonaparte in Heart's Divided. The next year, he portrays one of his most famous characters. What makes it more unique is that Rains was not seen until the very end of the movie. The role was the title character in The Invisible Man. It was his distinctive voice which had won him the role. 
         Following The Invisible Man, Universal Studios turned him into a unscrupulous Southern district attorney, a small-time lawyer with political ambitions, named Andy Griffin in They Won't Forget (based on the murder trial of Leo M. Frank in 1915). 
         Rains received a four picture deal at Warner Bros. in 1935, first appearing in Anthony Adverse. The  following year he portrayed the scheming and traitorous Earl of Hertford in The Prince and the Pauper with Error Flynn and Montagu Love (as King Henry VIII). Not shedding his evil British persona right away, Rains portrayed the evil Prince John in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Oliver DeHaviland. This was followed by his appearance in Four Daughters. The following year, he appeared in what is considered his worst role and one he didn't want to do, that of Detective Monty Phelan in They Made Me a Criminal. He followed this up playing historical characters like Emperor Louis Napoleon III in Juarez starring Bette Davis and Jewish Revolutionary War financier Hymn Salomon in Warner Bros. anti-Nazi film Sons of Liberty with Montagu Love playing George Washington. Sons of Liberty won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject movie for 1939.
          He finished 1939 strong when, on loan to Columbia Studios, he won acclamations for his Oscar nominated role as the corrupt suave Senator Joseph Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (he lost to Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach). 
          In the next two years, he starred in ten films including playing Don José Alvarez de Cordoba in an Errol Flynn swashbuckler pirate movie The Sea Hawk in 1940. The following year, the 'heavenly' Rains returned to Columbia and appeared in the title role in the original Here Comes Mr. Jordan with Robert Montgomery. Rains then went to Universal Studios to play Lon Chaney, Jr.'s father in The Wolfman. 
          1942, was another big year for Rains. He played Alexander Q. Tower, a brooding small-town doctor, in Kings Row. This was followed with his role as Bette Davis' understanding psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith, in Now, Voyager with future Casablanca co-star Paul Heinreid (this was the first of four movies they appeared in together). 
          It was then, at age 52, he landed one of his most famous roles, that of the suave French police captain, Louis Renault, in Casablanca.  The original part (called Luis Rinaldi) was not very good, but it was expanded for Rains. He was guaranteed five weeks of work at $4,000 per week. He ended up making $28,000 in all. Rains earned a second Oscar nomination for supporting actor but lost to Charles Coburn in The More the Merrier. On the set, Rains developed a good friendship with Humphrey Bogart that lasted long after the movie. Rains was described by fellow actors as being very professional.
           The next year, he played the title role in Phantom of the Opera, a disfigured violinist who is in love with Christine Dubois, played by Susanna Foster. 
           In 1944, he received the part of Free-French Captain Freycinet, who wears an eye patch, in the war drama Passage to Marseille with Bogart, Dantine, Greenstreet and Lorre which was produced by Hal B. Wallis and directed by Michael Curtiz. Later that year, he was nominated for another supporting Oscar for his work as Job Skeffington, the faithful stockbroker husband of Bette Davis, in Mr. Skeffington, but lost to Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way. Ironically, Paul Henreid was offered the part first and turned it down. In 1945, Rains became the first film actor to receive a million dollars for his title role as Julius Caesar in the film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play Caesar and Cleopatra where he starred opposite Vivien Leigh.  He was Shaw's first choice to play the role.
          In 1946, he was nominated for his fourth supporting actor Oscar as Ingrid Bergman's jealous husband and secret Nazi living in Brazil, Alex Sebastian, in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Notorious with Cary Grant, but lost to Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives. In all, Rains received four nominations for actor in a supporting role, but never won an Oscar. 
          Rains first married Isabell Jeans (in 1958 she played Aunt Alicia in Gigi) in 1913 but divorced two years later. After a brief marriage to actress Marie Hemingway in 1920, Rains married actress Beatriz Thomas in 1924. This lasted until they divorced on April 8, 1935. The next day, Rains married Frances Propper. He had a daughter Jessica Rains (in 1977, she portrayed Andrea in Islands in the Stream with George C. Scott). They divorced in 1956 and he married Agi Jambor in 1959. This, like his first four marriages, also ended in divorce, in 1960. Later that year, Rains married his sixth and last wife, Rosemary Clark Schrode, who died on New Years Eve, 1964. 
          In 1951, he returned to Broadway for a couple of years in Darkness at Noon where he received a Tony Award.
          In 1959's  The Earth is Mine, Rains and Ann Lee, as Charlotte and Philippe Rambeau, play the wealthy owners of a California vineyard who want their niece, played by Jean Simmons, to marry the heir of another vineyard, and not her illegitimate cousin, played by Rock Hudson. The following year, Rains played the intrepid Professor George Edward Challenger searching for dinosaurs in the Amazon rain forest in The Lost World (the special effects are pretty cheesy - lizards with spikes and horns stuck to them). 
          In 1962, Rains was nearing the end of his career but still performed as well as he did at the beginning. This was extremely evident when you see him, at age 77, portray Mr. Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O'Toole. 
           Rains also appeared in numerous TV shows like, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wagon Train, Rawhide and Dr. Kildare. He appeared in 61 movies in his entire career. His last movie was in 1964, playing another historical figure, King Herod, in The Greatest Story Ever Told.
           He enjoyed living on his farm in Pennsylvania. Later he retired to Sandwich, New Hampshire. Becoming ill, he was taken from his home to Lakes Region Hospital in Laconia, New Hampshire. On May 3, 1966, Rains died at the age of 76 of an intestinal hemorrhage and is interred in the Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough, New Hampshire beside his sixth wife, Rosemary, who had died three years before. His tombstone reads; "All things once are things forever, Soul, once living, lives forever."

           A European son of an aristocrat, Paul Henreid was born in Trieste, Austria-Hungary (Today, Trieste is in Northeastern Italy just South of the Alps) in 1908, his full name is Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter Von Wassel-Waldingau. He was one of three Austrian actors, along with Helmut Dantine and Ludwig Stössel, in Casablanca.
           Henreid was very tall at 6' 3". He studied at the Max Reinhardt acting school after moving to Vienna and went on to a successful stage career from 1933-1938. Henreid was discovered by Otto Preminger (then a stage director) while in Vienna. 
            Henreid went to England in 1935 and appeared in a number of movies there. He married Elizabeth "Lisl" Gluck, who he remained married to his entire life, and they adopted two daughters. Henreid was in in England playing Prince Albert in Victoria the Great when Hitler occupied Austria during the Anschluß in 1938. His prominent work in England, his outspoken anti-Nazi statements (he had refused to become a member of the Nationalist Socialist Actors Guild of Germany) and his family's prominent position, left him in danger of deportation to Germany when war broke out in 1939. He was re-classified in England and after he did Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1939 and Night Train to Munich (where he was billed as Paul von Hernreid) in 1940, he went to the United States and became a citizen.
            Henreid signed a contract with RKO Pictures and did Joan of Paris. He made a name for himself with his stature, good looks and romantic accent. In 1942, he had one of the more famous Hollywood scenes when he lights two cigarettes in his own mouth and then hands one to Bette Davis in Now Voyager. Claude Rains also appeared in the movie (this was the first of four movies they appeared in together). 
            Reluctant to accept the role in Casablanca, the 34-year old Henreid did so after receiving star billing with Bogart and Bergman, getting a seven year contract with Warner Brothers and having the role of Victor Laszlo beefed up. 
            Two years later, Henreid starred with Ida Lupino in In Our Time. Later in 1944, he appeared with Greenstreet and Lorre in The Conspirators. The following year, he left the stiff Laszlo character behind and portrayed more of a swashbuckling character when he starred with Maureen O'Hara in The Spanish Main as Captain Laurent Van Horn. 
            In 1946, Henreid portrayed Reverend Arthur Nicholls, who was sought after by two of the Bronte sisters, played by Ida Lupino and Olivia DeHaviland, in Devotion. Casablanca co-star Sydney Greenstreet also appeared in the movie. He next received top billing in the drama Of Human Bondage. In Deception, Henried plays a cello player, Karel Novak, who is romantically attached to his music teacher Christine Radcliffe, played by Bette Davis. When Novak is thought to have been killed in the war, Alexander Hollenius, played by Claude Rains, moves in on Christine. When Novak returns, Christine falls in love with him again. Hollenius torments Christine, who eventually shoots him. Henreid's cello-playing was dubbed by Eleanor Aller (Mrs. Felix Slatkin) while she was pregnant with Frederic Zlotkin. Her father, Gregory Aller, coached Henreid in plausible bow movements. 
            Henreid, portraying composer Robert Schumann, starred opposite Catherine Hepburn in the romance Song of Love in 1947. Casablanca actors Ludwig Stössel and Torben Meyer also appeared in the film. Henried and Hepburn would appear in the same roles the following year The Schumann Story. The next year, Henreid played a thief on the run from big time gamblers he robbed and who has to take on another identity in Hollow Triumph. John Qualan also appeared in the movie.
            Henreid teamed up with Claude Rains and Peter Lorre in 1949's Rope of Sand. Henreid plays Commandant Paul G. Vogel, a arrogant, sadistic villain who abuses Burt Lancaster in hopes of finding the location of diamonds in South Africa. 
            In 1950, he again got to play a swashbuckler when he starred in Last of the Buccaneers as pirate Jean Lafitte. Casablanca bit actor Jean Del Val (police announcer) had a credited role in the movie. 
            In 1952, Henried made his directorial debut, and also starred in, the "B" drama For Men Only. He directed movies and television shows including Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It was a busy year as Henreid starred in four more movies in 1952; the comedy Pardon My French, the adventure movie Thief of Damascus, the drama A Stolen Face and the French film Dans la vie tout s'arrange. 
            Henreid only starred in two movies in 1953; Mantrap and Siren of Bagdad. In 1954, Henreid portrayed Florenz Ziegfeld in the musical biography of American composer Siegmund Romberg (played by José Ferrer) in M-G-M's Deep in My Heart. The following year he played pirate captain Edri-Al-Gardian in Pirates of Tripoli. 
               In 1956, Henreid had a small role as Cyd Charisse's manager in M-G-M's musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. Later that year, he directed and stared in the mystery A Woman's Devotion. The following year, he appeared in the Dean Martin comedy Ten Thousand Bedrooms along with Casablanca actor Marcel Dalio. It would be two years before Henreid appeared in his next film playing Nico Minardos' suave father in the comedy Holiday For Lovers featuring Clifton Webb and Jane Wyman. Later in 1959, Henreid appeared in a World War II action drama Never So Few which stared Frank Sinatra, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen and Gina Lollobrigida. 
            Henreid's next movie was three years later in 1962 when he starred in Vincente Minnelli's drama The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse where he played Ingrid Thulin's husband and the head of a wealthy Argentinean family. The film also starred Glenn Ford, Paul Lukas and Charles Boyer. He next played a Nazi general in the M-G-M World War II spy drama Operation Crossbow with George Peppard and Sophia Loren in 1965. Henreid next starred opposite Katherine Hepburn in the disappointing comedy The Madwoman of Chaillot in 1969. 
            Henreid appeared in two TV movies in the 1970's; The Failing of Raymond with Dana Andrews,  Jane Wyman and Dean Stockwell and Death Among Friends with Martin Balsam. His last movie, at age 69, (he did 47 in his career) was in 1977, when he appeared with Richard Burton and Max Von Sydow in the Exorcist II, The Heretic.
            Henreid died of pneumonia on March 29, 1992 at age 84 in Santa Monica and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California. His wife Lisl joined him the following year. Also in the cemetery is fellow Casablanca actress Ilka Grünig (Mrs. Leuchtag) and actor George Bancroft. 

           Born Hans Walter Conrad Weidt on January 22, 1893 in Potsdam, Germany (suburb of Berlin), he was one of three Casablanca actors born in Berlin (along with Curt Bois and Trude Berliner) and was 49 years old when Casablanca was made. He grew up in Schoeneberg, a suburb of Berlin where he became interested in acting. 
            His first motion picture was called Der Weg des Todes (The Road of Death) in 1916. Veidt was drafted into the German Army at the beginning of World War I and sent to the eastern front (Russia), but spent most of the time in a hospital. He was released from the army in 1916. Only three years later he landed a key role in what has come to be considered an expressionist classic (and one of the world's first horror movies), Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.) 
           Veidt married actress Gussy Holl in 1918, but the marriage would only last four years. In 1923, he married Felicitas Radke and had a daughter named Viola. Veidt achieved international fame in the movie, Der Student von Prage (The Student of Prague) in 1926. The Veidt family sailed to America on board the SS Mauretania in 1927 and appeared in four silent films like 1928's The Man Who Laughs (which also featured Casablanca actor Torben Meyer). 
           Veidt was considered by Universal Studios for the role of Dracula, however it eventually went to Bela Lugosi. He returned to Germany and in 1929, he appeared in the first talking motion picture made in Germany, Das Land ohne Frauen (The Land Without Women). Veidt continued his movie career portraying such characters as Rasputin and William Tell. He divorced Felicitas in 1932 and married a Hungarian, Ilona (Lilli) Präeger in 1933.
           When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Veidt, and his wife, Lilli, who was part Jewish, left Germany for Great Britain, where he continued to make movies for the next seven years. He returned to Germany once in 1938 which turned out to be a mistake. When he contracted to make, Jew Süss (The story of life in the 18th century Jewish ghetto of Wurtemburg) in Britain, the Nazi government tried to stop him from leaving Germany to make the movie claiming he was "to ill to travel." A group of English doctors, sent by  Gaumont British Studios, went to Germany to get him back. He was eventually allowed to leave when the Nazis apparently relented in order to avoid a major scandal over Veidt's detention. In 1939, he became a British citizen.
             In 1937, he made the spy thriller Dark Journey set during the First World War in neutral Sweden. He plays a German spy Baron Karl Von Marwitz who is romantically involved with a French spy played by Vivien Leigh. Two years later, he plays U-Boat Captain Hardt, an admirable spy in the First World War in The Spy in the Dark. 
             While filming The Thief of Bagdad, Veidt again returned to America in 1940. Back in Nazi Germany, Veidt was blacklisted by the Nazi government. M.G.M. head Louis B. Mayer invited Veidt to play General von Kolb in the anti-Nazi movie Escape. His only request was for his favorite Berliner Weißebier (can you blame him?). Future Casablanca actors, Helmut Dantine, Wolfgang Zilzer, Henry Rowland, Lotti Palfi and William Edmunds were also in the movie. 
             Ironically, Veidt was cast mostly as Nazi's by Hollywood for the rest of his career. In his contract with M-G-M, he demanded a clause saying he would only play villains, He felt the best way to fight the Nazi's was to portray them unsympathetically on screen. In addition, instead of making his Nazi characters crude and boorish, he made them cultured and sophisticated.
             After tormenting Norma Shearer in Escape, Veidt  menaces Joan Crawford in A Women's Face. In 1941, Veidt plays a couple of non-Nazis in the comedy Whistling in the Dark with Red Skelton followed by The Men in Her Life with Loretta Young. 
             In his next movie, Veidt plays both Nazi and non-Nazi in Nazi Agent. He has a duel role as German-born identical twins, Otto Becker and Baron Hugo von Detner (both played by Veidt), one a loyal American and the other, a Nazi official. Eventually, the good brother kills the bad brother and exposes the whole Nazi spy ring. This was followed by his role as Franz Ebbing, the leader of a Nazi spy ring (though the word Nazi is not used), who along with Peter Lorre, is trying to blow up a battleship in New York harbor, only to be stopped by Humphrey Bogart in All Through the Night.
             In 1942, at age 49, he was cast in the movie Casablanca playing the sinister Major Heinrich Strasser. Veidt won out over Austrian Otto Preminger in the role of Major Strasser primarily because Veidt commanded $2,000 per week less than Preminger. Borrowed (M.G.M. was paid $5,000 a week for him) by Warner Brothers, Veidt was the highest paid actor on the set of Casablanca (on the basis of days worked for money earned) being paid $25,000. 
            Later that year, he stared in his last movie (his 109th overall), portraying a charming Nazi spy in Above Suspicion with Fred McMurray and Joan Crawford (this was Crawford's last movie with M-G-M who released her afterwards).
            Despite playing Nazi's on film, Veidt was an ardent anti-Nazi. He made substantial financial contributions to the British and Allied war efforts in World War II. 
            Veidt was the first Casablanca actor to die. On April 3, 1943 Conrad Veidt, only 50 years old and at the top of his career, died suddenly and very unexpectedly of a coronary thrombosis on the eighth hole of the Riviera Country Club golf course on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Veidt's daughter Viola, now 17, and her mother Felicitas, who were living in Switzerland at the time, happen to hear a bulletin on the radio.
            Veidt  who traveled a lot during his life was not done traveling. Veidt's remains are cremated on April 5th at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Little is known about the history of Veidt's remains between 1943 and when his wife Lilli had the urn interred at Ferncliff Cemetery (where Basil Rathbone is buried) in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York, probably in the 1960's (the name can still be seen in the Mausoleum). Lilli Veidt died on November 22, 1980 and at her request, her remains are co-mingled with her husband's. The urn was then removed from its location at Ferncliff Cemetery and sent to her nephew, Ivan Rado, for safekeeping. In 1985, the East German government invites Rado to bring their ashes to be interred in the Stahnsdorf cemetery (near Potsdam) next to the grave of actor F.W. Murnau. Rado initially agrees but later doesn't make the trip. 
            In 1990, Jim Rathlesberger founds the Conrad Veidt Society (CVS). In 1991, there is an invitation from the now united German government to return the Veidt's ashes for burial in Berlin. In 1995, Rado, now living in Seattle, gives his collection of Veidt documents, mementos, and photographs to Rathlesburger. Quite unexpectedly the urn containing the Veidt's ashes is discovered among the boxes of the collection that Rado has turned over to Rathlesberger. In 1996, Rathlesberger offers to bring Veidt's ashes to Berlin, but receives a letter from Rado asking that the ashes be interred in Great Britain instead.
              In 1997, following the lack of any response from Germany, the Conrad Veidt Society, help arrange for the Veidt's interment at Golders Green Crematorium, in London. Rathlesberger and his wife personally carry the urn on their flight from California to London. On April 3, 1998, ceremonies at Golders Green Crematorium dedicate the new resting place for the ashes of Conrad and Lilli Veidt in the Hall of Memory Columbarium. The cemetery is the resting place of Vivien Leigh, Peter Sellers, Bram Stoker, Sigmund Freud and "Who" drummer, Keith Moon. 
 

         The most interesting aspect about Dooley Wilson is that he was a drummer, not a piano player. He almost didn't get the part because of this. They used another piano player off screen to play the part while Wilson faked it. Since Wilson was under contract to Paramount, Warner Brothers paid Paramount $700 to use Wilson in the movie. Wilson only got $150 of it. 
        He was also the only cast member to actually have been to Casablanca in Morocco. He had formed a band called the Red Devils and was touring Europe where they were very popular. They performed in Casablanca in an event honoring World War I hero T.E. Lawrence. 
        Arthur "Dooley" Wilson was born on April 3, 1886 in Tyler, Texas and was 55 years old when Casablanca was made. He began his career in vaudeville at the age of 12. He received his nickname Dooley when he did a show made up as an Irishman singing the song, "Mr. Dooley." In the 1920's, he formed a band where he was a singing drummer. In 1930, he returned to the United States to start an acting career. Wilson performed with Orson Welles and John Hausman in Federal Theater productions and then landed a Broadway role in the musical Cabin in the Sky. Wilson made his film debut in 1939 in the movie Keep Punching It's a low budget film featuring a professional boxer, Henry Armstrong. He later signed with Paramount Pictures. In 1942, he got a role as a train porter in the Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Blonde. He received two more roles that year playing what he called black stereotype "pullman-porter" roles. Disgusted, Wilson  was on the verge of leaving Hollywood when Casablanca producer Hal B. Wallis began the auditions for the role of Sam.
         Wilson won out over top contender Clarence Muse (who'd later play Sam on a '50s TV adaptation of Casablanca), but his services cost Warner's dearly. Though Wilson received only $500 per week, the cost Paramount imposed on Warner's' for the loanout resulted in Wilson being the most expensive of Casablanca's supporting cast. On May 3, 1942, at age 56, Wilson was announced as Sam. Since he didn't play the piano, all of the music is performed off set by an African-American pianist named Elliot Carpenter. Wilson and Carpenter, being the only Blacks on the set, became good friends. The film represented perhaps Wilson's best movie work, a role that immortalized him to filmgoers of future years, even though he was never really able to play "As Time Goes By."
         After Casablanca, Wilson appeared in 13 more movies though none as prominent as Casablanca. In 1943, Wilson played Gabe Tucker, and was part of a on-screen romantic triangle with Lena Horne and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the all-black film musical Stormy Weather. The next year, Wilson played Oscar the chauffeur, one of Leon Errol's scheming domestic staff trying to arrange a marriage between Michèle Morgan and Frank Sinatra (playing himself) in the comedy Higher and Higher. Jack Haley (the Tin man from the Wizard of Oz) was the brains behind the scheme. He followed this up with RKO's musical Seven Days Leave. 
         In 1945, Wilson turned his attention to Broadway. He had a prominent role in the New York musical Bloomer Girl. 
         In 1948, he was back in Hollywood where he appeared in two movies; Triple Threat, a football movie that featured eleven professional players including six future Hall of Famer's (Sammy Baugh, Sid  Luckman, Charles Trippi, Stephen Van Buren, Bob Waterfield and Bill Dudley) and Racing Luck, a horse racing movie where he sings "Don't Change Your Mind", a song written by him and Elliott Carpenter.
         The following year Wilson appeared in four movies. Wilson was back playing a piano in a Humphrey Bogart movie, the crime drama Knock on Any Door (he wasn't credited in this movie, but almost no one was in this one). He appeared with Loretta Young and Celeste Holm in Come to the Stable. He played a pullman/porter in the Rosalind Russell comedy Tell It to the Judge. Lastly, he appeared in the comedy Free For All with Ryan Cummings.
         In 1950, Wilson appeared in two movies; a small role playing a train waiter in No Man of Her Own with Barbara Stanwyck, and Father is a Bacholar with William Holden. This movie also featured Sig Ruman who would play Sergeant Schultz in Stalag 17 three years later.
         Wilson's last movie was in a 1951 western, Passage West which also featured Casablanca actress Ilka Grüning (Mrs. Leuchtag - Carl's immigrating friend). Wilson's last major role was as Bill Jackson, the erstwhile boyfriend of maid Ethel Waters (and later Louise Beavers) on the early-TV sitcom Beulah, one of the first television series starring black actors, in 1951. Wilson was on the board of directors of the Negro Actors Guild of America.
         Wilson retired from show business in 1953. Shortly after on May 30, Wilson died in Los Angeles at the age of 67, the second major Casablanca actor to pass away. He is buried in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles with his wife Estelle, who passed away in 1971. He is in the same cemetery as Hattie McDanial (Gone With the Wind) and Henry Armstrong, the boxer who stared in his first movie.

            Born Sydney Hughes Greenstreet in Sandwich, England on December 27, 1879 to a family that could trace its heritage back to the Norman conquest. After growing up in a 400 year old family house in Kent, Sydney rejected the families long tradition of working in the leather business and at age 19 went to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to work for a tea company. A drought ended that career, not to mention bankrupting him, although while he was there he read the complete works of William Shakespeare. After returning to England and working in a brewery, he joined the Ben Greet Academy of Acting. 
             In 1902, he made his theatrical debut portraying a murderer in Sherlock Holmes, and two years later he traveled with Greet to the United States. After making his Broadway debut in Everyman, Greenstreet's remained in America for the rest of his life. For the next 30 years he acted in both classical and modern plays, from musical comedy to Shakespeare, and received good reviews. In 1933, Greenstreet joined the Lunts in Idiot's Delight, performing with their Theatre Guild to the end of the 1930's.
           While appearing with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Los Angeles in There Shall be No Night, he was seen by John Huston who cast him in a film version of Dashiell Hammett's book, The Maltese Falcon. At age 61 he made his film debut a memorable one as Casper Gutman (the Fat Man), the loquacious and enigmatic villain for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor (his only one, however he lost to Donald Crisp in How Green Was My Valley) and a contract from Warner Bros. He also starred with future Casablanca co-stars Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. In fact, Greenstreet, Bogart and Lorre would appear in three films together. Even more amazing, of the only 23 movies he appeared in, ten were with co-star Lorre.
             Greenstreet made 24 movies between 1941 and 1949 and in most of them he was greedy for food, money or power. His impressive girth gave him tremendous presence and his corruption was always urbane and made more sinister by his good manners. His next portrayed the portly General Winfield Scott, who loved Bermuda onions and who helped the career of a young George Custer, played by Errol Flynn, in They Died With Their Boots On. He next teamed up again with Huston and Bogart in Across the Pacific which also featured Casablanca bit actor Monte Blue. 
            Before he would play Senior Ferrari in Casablanca, Greenstreet insisted the role be enhanced and demanded $3,750 a week with a guarantee of three weeks work (he eventually was paid $13,000). He was worth every penny and in Aljean Harmetz’s words, "his affable malignancy made Casablanca more dangerous." Greenstreet, at age 63, was the oldest major actor on the set of Casablanca.
            Greenstreet and Lorre teamed up in 1943 in the average war drama Background to Danger with George Raft. Playing the arrogant fascist sympathizing Major Duval, Greenstreet is again reunited with his Casablanca co-stars, Bogart, Rains, Dantine and, of course, Lorre, in Passage to Marsailles which was produced by Hal B. Wallis and directed by Michael Curtiz.
            In 1944, Greenstreet and Lorre work together to solve a mystery in The Mask of Dimitrios along with Casablanca bit actors Monte Blue, Georges Renavent, Louis Mercier and Lotte Palfi. Next, Greenstreet plays the leader of a small band of underground conspirators, Ricardo Quintanilla, trying to discover a Nazi traitor in The Conspirators with Casablanca actors Dantine, Lorre, Blue, Mercier, Martin Garralaga, William Edmunds and Marcel Dalio. 
            Always wanting to play comedy, Greenstreet finally got his chance in 1945 with Pillow to Post with Ida Lupino. He also appeared opposite Bogart again in the drama Conflict
            Greenstreet plays Alexander Yardley, a rich magazine mogul whose famous food writer Elizabeth Lane, played by Barbara Stanwyck, is a fraud who has been using the recipes of her friend, a Hungarian cook named Felix played by S.Z. Sakall, in Christmas in Connecticut. Casablanca bit actor Olaf Hytten plays Greenstreet's butler.
            In 1946, Greenstreet and Lorre, along with Geraldine Fitzgerald, appeared in the crime drama Three Strangers. Next, playing William Makepeace Thackeray, he appeared in an unhistorical movie about the Bronte family in Devotion with Ida Lupino, Olivia DeHaviland and Nancy Coleman playing the Bronte sisters and Paul Henried playing the Reverend Arthur Nicholls. Greenstreet and Lorre next appeared in the mystery thriller The Verdict.
            The following year, he appeared in a small "B"movie That Way with Women with a few Casablanca bit actors; Blue, Hytten and Creighton Hale. He followed this by playing Clark Gable's boss in The Hucksters. In 1948, he appears in a Citizen Kane like movie Ruthless. This is followed by playing Agnes Morehead's husband, Count Alessandro Fosco, in The Woman in White. 
            In 1949, Greenstreet played a corrupt Southern political boss called Sheriff Titus Semple who tries to drive carnival dancer Lane Bellamy, played by Joan Crawford, out of town in Flamingo Road which was directed by Michael Curtiz. This was followed later that year by his last movie, which was a M-G-M World War II spy drama with Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart called Malasia. 
            In 1952, Greenstreet retired from acting. Greenstreet suffered from diabetes and Bright's disease, a kidney disorder. Two years later on January 18, 1954, Greenstreet died at the age of 74 from complications arising from his diabetes. He was the third major Casablanca actor, after Veidt and Wilson, to pass away. He was cremated and his remains are in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California in the Utility Columbarium (not accessible to the general public - more of a storage area) in the Great Mausoleum (producer Hal B. Wallis and composer Max Steiner are also in the mausoleum but in different sections). There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn than at any other spot in the world. It is a huge cemetery (over 300 acres) that also contains Casablanca co-stars Humphrey Bogart, S. Z. Sakall and John Qualan along with director Michael Curtiz.
             He was survived by his only child, John Ogden Greenstreet, born out of Sydney's marriage to Dorothy Marie Ogden. John Ogden Greenstreet died March 4, 2004 at age 84. Greenstreet is the great uncle of British stage and screen actor Mark Greenstreet who was once considered as Roger Moore's replacement as James Bond 007.

            Chubby-jowled Hungarian character actor S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall played numerous supporting roles in Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1940's and 1950's. His rotund cuteness earned Sakall the nickname "Cuddles," and he was often billed as S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall in his later films though he was never happy about the name.
            Born Eugene Gero (Szöke Szakall) on February 2, 1884 in Budapest, Hungary, he and and Lorre are the two Hungarian actors in Casablanca. His mother died when he was young and his father while he was growing up. 
            Sakall’s career started on stage and screen in Hungary. He originally began as a sketch writer for Budapest vaudeville shows, then turned to acting at age 18. Initially billed as Szoeko Szakall (which translated to "blonde beard," in honor of the facial adornment he'd grown to appear older). The actor became a star of the Hungarian stage and screen in the 1910's and 1920's and later became popular on stages in Vienna and Berlin. His first movie was in 1927, Familientag im Hause Prellstein. In 1929, he appeared in Ihre Majestaet die Liebe (which  was remade in Hollywood as Her Majesty Love, with W.C. Fields in Sakall's role) and Two Hearts in Waltz Time in 1930. During this time, for a brief period, he ran his own production company.
            When the Nazi's came to power in Germany in 1933, Sakall was forced to return to Hungary. He was involved in over 40 movies in Hungary before fleeing the Nazis, who took control of Hungary, again in 1940 with his wife and headed for Hollywood. Many of Sakall's close relatives would later die in Nazi concentration camps, including all three of his sisters, his niece along with his wife's brother and sister.
            Sakall began a career that included "an endless succession of excitable theatrical impresarios, lovable European uncles and befuddled shopkeepers." 
            His first Hollywood role was in the 1940 comedy It's a Date opposite Deanna Durbin. His first big hit was Ball of Fire with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Later he signed a contract with Warner Brothers where had a number of other small roles including 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy with Jimmy Cagney. In this film he plays Schwab, a theatrical producer that George M. Cohen (Cagney) and his partner Sam Harris (played by Richard Whorf) scam into producing their musical. 
             Later that year, at the age of 51, he portrayed one of his more famous roles, that of Carl, the Headwaiter, in Casablanca. Producer Hal Wallis signed Sakall for his waiter role three weeks after filming on Casablanca had begun. When he was first offered the part he hated it and turned it down. When the movie started filming, the role of Carl was still  uncast. Sakall finally agreed to the role as long as they would give him four weeks of work. The two sides eventually agreed on three weeks. He received $1,750 per week (same as Lorre) and was paid $5,250 total. He actually had more screen time then Lorre or Greenstreet. His trademark jowls, broken English and nervous excitability were perfect for the role of Carl. Sakall appeared in 30 more movies after this including 1945's Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck and Casablanca co-star Sydney Greenstreet. 
            Sakall appeared in four films in 1948. First he appeared in the drama Embracable You followed by April Showers which also featured Casablanca bit actors Dewey Robinson and Leo White. Next he starred as Uncle Lazlo Lazlo in the Michael Curtiz (Casablanca director) movie, Romance on the High Seas with Doris Day in her first movie. His last film of the year was Whiplash.
            1949 was a big year for Sakall appearing in four top movies. First Sakall played Felix Hofer in the Doris Day (her second movie) film My Dream is Yours. Later that year, he starred with June Havers and Ray Bolger (the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz) in Look for the Silver Lining. Bit actors from Casablanca, Monte Blue and Leo White, had bit parts in this movie (Blue played an actor in on screen portrayal of Uncle Tom's Cabin). Next, he starred with Judy Garland and Van Johnson as Otto Oberkugenin, the owner of a Chicago music store that is obsessed with harps and his Stradivarius violin, in The Good Ol Summertime. Finally in 1949, Sakall was given the principal role of songwriter Fred Fisher in Oh, You Beautiful Doll, though top billing went to June Haver. This film also featured fellow Casablanca actor Curt Bois. 
            Sakall appeared in nine more movies during the 1950's, two of which were musicals with Doris Day, playing J. Maxwell Bloomhaus in Tea For Two and Adolph Hubbell in Lullaby of Broadway. His other roles included; Poppa Schultz in the Errol Flynn western Montana (Casablanca bit actors Monte Blue and Ceighton Hale had bit parts in this movie), Miklos Teretzky in the June Haver musical The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady, Don Miguel in the Randolph Scott western Sugerfoot, Uncle Felix in the musical Painting the Clouds With Sunshine with Virginia Mayo and Stefan Szabo in one of the episodes in the movie It's A Big Country which featured such famous names as Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Gary Cooper, Janet Leigh, Frederick March and Ethel Barrymore. 
            His last movie was in 1954 where he had the role of  Joseph Ruder in The Student Prince. Casablanca actor John Qualan had a small role in this movie.
           Sakall died of a heart attack in Hollywood shortly after filming the The Student Prince on February 12, 1955, ten days after his 71st birthday. He is the fourth major Casablanca actor, after Veidt, Wilson and Greenstreet, to pass away. He is buried in the Garden of Memory in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn than at any other spot in the world. It is a huge cemetery (over 300 acres) that also contains Casablanca co-stars Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and John Qualan along with producer Hal B. Wallis, director Michael Curtiz and composer Max Steiner.

              Qualan, who plays a Norwegian was actually Canadian. He was born John Kvalen on December 8, 1899 in Vancouver, British Columbia to Norwegian parents. He became interested in acting while a student at Northwestern University. This didn't make his father, a minister, very happy. He went to New York in 1929 to pursue his career. 
            A veteran of the tent-show and vaudeville circuits by the late 1920's, Qualan got his movie acting break in 1931 with a small role as a Swedish janitor in the movie Street Scene. Qualen won the important role of the Swedish janitor in the Broadway play Street Scene by marching into the producer's office and demonstrating his letter-perfect Scandinavian accent.  This started a career as a familiar character player, specializing in Scandinavians of various nationalities. 
            That same year he first worked for director John Ford in Arrowsmith. He became a member of Ford's famed "stock company," and had prominent roles for Ford for the next thirty-five years. 
           Slight of stature, and possessed of woebegone, near-tragic facial features, Qualen was most often cast in "victim" roles, notably the union-activist miner who is beaten to death by hired hooligans in Black Fury in 1935 and the memorable role of the pathetic, half-mad Muley in The Grapes of Wrath, where he tells the sad story of the destruction of his farm, in 1940. Qualen was able to harness his trodden-upon demeanor for comedy as well, as witness his performance as the bewildered father of the Dionne quintuplets in The Country Doctor in 1936.
             Later in 1940, Qualan received the role of Knute Rockne's dad, Lars Knutson Rockne, in Knute Rockne All American. In the film, young Knute, played by Johnny 'Tarzan's boy' Sheffield (the adult Rockne was played by Pat O'Brien), tells his dad, "speak American, Papa...We're in America, now."
            Two years later, he landed the role of Berger, a Norwegian underground fighter, in Casablanca at the age of 41. He only had a few lines in two scenes and was paid only $400.
            Qualan appeared in over 140 movies. In 1949, Qualan appeared with Henreid in Hollow Triumph.  In 1945, he received a role in the pirate movie Captain Kidd with Charles Laughton, Randolph Scott and John Carradine. Later that year, he appeared in the Clark Gable and Greer Garson romance Adventure along with Casablanca bit actors Martin Garralaga (waiter) and Charles La Torre (Italian officer). In 1947, he appeared in High Conquest starring Warren Douglas. Later that year Qualan played a doctor in the movie based on Graham Greene's novel The Fugitive with Henry Fonda.
            The following year, Qualan appeared in My Girl Tisa and 16 Fathoms Deep. Inn 1949, he appeared with Robert Mitchum in the thriller The Big Steal. 
            In 1950, Qualan appeared in the submarine movie The Flying Missile with Glenn Ford and a year later in Goodbye, My Fancy with Joan Crawford. Qualan played the town mayor in the classic Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye in 1952. In 1954, Qualan played Professor Willie Klauber in The Student Prince which was S.Z. Sakall's last movie. Also that year; he had a small role in John Wayne's airline adventure movie The High and the Mighty and he played Gaspar Melo in the western Passion with Cornel Wilde and Yvonne De Carlo. In 1955, he played Chief Engineer Schmitt in the World War II adventure The Sea Chase. John Wayne plays the captain of a German freighter trying to escape the British and get home while Lana Turner plays a spy on board. Later that year, he appeared with Fred MacMurray in the western At Gunpoint (a kind of second-rate High Noon). 
            As I already mentioned, Qualan appeared in a number of movies with John Wayne. One of the more memorable ones was as Lars Jorgensen in the 1956 Wayne classic The Searchers. In 1960, he appeared in North To Alaska, and in 1962, he played Peter Ericson in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and as Charlie Biller in the 1965 movie The Sons of Katie Elder. 
            Qualan received roles in other westerns as well; Johnny Concho with Frank Sinatra, The Big Land with Alan Ladd, Hell Bent for Leather with Audie Murphy, Two Rode Together with Jimmy Stewart and Richard Widmark, Cheyenne Autumn with Widmark and Karl Malden, A Big Hand for the Little Lady with Henry Fonda, The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin with Roddy McDowall and Firecreek with Stewart and Fonda.
            In 1958, Qualan appeared in the re-make of the Ernest Hemingway short story "To Have and Have Not" with Audie Murphy called The Gun Runners. The following year, he appeared in the Otto Preminger Oscar-nominated mystery Anatomy of a Murder with Jimmy Stewart. In 1963, he had a bit role in Donovan's Reef. In 1965, he played Olaf in Bob Hope's I'll Take Sweden and Mr. Faber in A Patch of Blue with Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. In 1969, he appeared in Michael Douglas' first starring movie Hail' Hero. His last movie, at age 73, was in a 1973 comedy, Frasier, the Sensuous Lion. 
            Qualan died of a heart attack in Torrence, California on September 12, 1987 at the age of 86. He is buried with his wife Pearle and his parents in the Sanctuary of Reliance in the Great Mausoleum in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale (actor Sydney Greenstreet, producer Hal B. Wallis and composer Max Steiner are also in the mausoleum but in different sections). There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn than at any other spot in the world. It is a huge cemetery (over 300 acres) that also contains Casablanca actors Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and S. Z. Sakall along with director Michael Curtiz.

             Born Marie Therese Ernestine in Bourg-la-Reine, France, on February 22, 1921, she married future Casablanca actor Marceli Dalio (the croupier Emil) as a 17 year old in 1938 (it was his second marriage). They met while doing a play together. The following year, she appeared in her first movie, the French drama, Jeunes filles en détresse (Girls in Distress). 
             In June of 1940, LeBeau and Dalio left Paris ahead of the invading German army and reached Lisbon. It took them two months to get visas to Chili. However, when their ship stopped in Mexico they were stranded because the visas they had purchased turned out to be forgeries (along with around 200 other passengers). Eventually they were able to get temporary Canadian passports and come to the United States. 
           Lebeau made her Hollywood debut in Hold Back the Dawn in 1941 with Charles Boyer and Olivia DeHaviland along with future Casablanca actor Curt Bois. The following year, she received a good role in the Errol Flynn movie Gentleman Jim (biography of famed Irish boxer James J. "Gentleman Jim" Corbett) and also appeared in Gentleman Jim in 1942. Future Casablanca actor S.Z. Sakall had a small role in the movie. 
            Later that year, at age 21, she received the role of Yvonne, Rick’s jilted mistress, in Casablanca. Warner Brothers signed her to a $100 a week contract for 26 weeks (to be in a number of films. On June 22, while she was filming her scenes in Casablanca, her husband Marcel Dalio filed for divorce in Los Angeles on the grounds of desertion. Shortly before the release of the movie, Warner Bros. terminated her contract.
           After Casablanca she appeared in two more American films. The first was a large role in the war drama Paris After Dark in 1943 with other Casablanca actors Curt Bois and her former husband Marceli Dalio. The following year, LeBeau had a smaller role in Music for Millions.
           After the end of World War II, LeBeau returned to France and continued her acting career. In 1947, she appeared in Les Chouans (The Royalists). In 1950, LeBeau traveled to Great Britain to appear in a movie with Gene Simmons called Cage of Gold.
           She would appear in 20 more movies in France including Une Parisienne in 1957 with Charles Boyer and Brigitte Bardot. One of her last French movies was the Federico Fellini film 8½ in 1963 (Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film). LeBeau last two movies were Spanish productions in 1965. 
           In 1988, LeBeau married Tullio Pinelli. I have heard nothing about her since then.

List of Usual Suspects

              Leonard Kinsky (or in Russian - Леонид Кински) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 18, 1903. He worked as a mime with imperial theaters before leaving Russia in 1921 because, as he put it "it just happened to be that I belonged to a group of people who were not wanted after the Revolution." Leaving the Bolshevik revolution behind, he reached New York with a South American theater troupe, the Firebird Players, whose act consisted of dance-interpreting famous paintings; since there was little call for this on Broadway, Kinskey was soon out of work. 
             The only English words he knew were such translation-book phrases as "My good kind sir," but Kinskey was able to improve his vocabulary by working as a waiter in Manhattan.
             Heading west for performing opportunities following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Kinskey joined the road tour of the Al Jolson musical Wonder Bar, which led to a role in his first film, Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise in 1932. His Slavic dialect and lean-and-hungry look made him ideal for anarchist, artist, poet and impresario type roles. He appeared with the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, with Gary Cooper in The General Died at Dawn, with Charles Boyer in Algiers, Bob Hope in Monsieur Beaucaire and Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm. Appearing with Bing Crosby in Rhythm on the Range in 1936, Kinskey surprised and delighted colleagues when he proved he could sing as well as act. The unlikely song for a Russian: "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande." 
             Kinskey, at age 39, a drinking buddy of Bogart, which in part accounted for how he got the job in Casablanca, replaced Leo Mostovoy as the Russian bartendar. His most memorable scene came after Rick arranged his rigged roulette table to pay off a young Bulgarian, Jan Brandel (Helmut Dantine), the money he needed for an exit visa, thus saving his wife (Joy Page) the need to "do a bad thing" with Renault (Claude Rains) for the visas. At this, Sascha impulsively grabs Rick and kisses him on both cheeks, saying "Boss, you done a beautiful thing." Rick shoves him away: "Go away, you crazy Russian. He would forever after be known as the "Mad Russian." 
              During the Red Scare of the '50s, Kinskey was frequently cast as a Communist spy, either comic or villainous. In 1956 he had a recurring role as a starving artist named Pierre on the Jackie Cooper sitcom The People's Choice. Kinskey cut down on acting in the '60s and '70s, preferring to write, produce and help Hollywood distribution companies determine which Russian films were worth importing. But whenever a television script (such as the 1965 "tribute" to Stan Laurel) called for a "crazy Russian", Leonid Kinsky was usually filled the bill.
             At the age of 91, he was one of the last member of the cast to die on September 8, 1998 in Fountain Hills, Arizona, of complications from a stroke. He was cremated and his ashes are resting in Phoenix, Arizona.

List of Usual Suspects

             Curt Bois was born in Berlin, Germany on April  5, 1901. He was one of three Casablanca actors born in Berlin (along with Conrad Veidt and Trude Berliner). He began acting at the young age of seven when he appeared in the movie, Bauernhaus und Grafenschloß which was directed by future Casablanca director, Michael Curtiz. After experience as a cabaret performer, Bois worked with the legendary impresario Max Reinhardt and appeared in 25 films in Germany.  Being Jewish, he was forced to leave Germany after the Nazi's came to power in 1933. He arrived in America in 1935 and learned English by listening to burlesque routines in New York City. 
            Bois acted in Broadway productions before moving to Hollywood in 1937. He appeared in Hollywood Hotel with Benny Goodman and his band. 
His first movie, in which he was seen in his standard characterization of a slick, self-important European, was 1937's Tovarich. Bois would act in 21 more films before landing the small role of a picketpocket in Casablanca. He only had two scenes in the movie. The first in beginning of the movie when he was warning the British couple (Gerald Oliver Smith and Norma Varden) while stealing their wallet and later in Rick's when he bumps into Carl who immediately checks to see if his wallet had been stolen. He was paid $1,000 for the two scenes.
            In 1943, Bois received small roles in a number of movies, including the war drama Paris After Dark which featured Casablanca actors Madeleine LeBeau and Marcel Dalio and a a small uncredited part being given to Wolfgang Zilzer. He started to receive larger roles like that of Nick Sirocco in the M-G-M musical Swing Fever and as François in the Oscar Hammerstein musical The Desert Song which also featured Casablanca actors Marcel Dalio and Alberto Morin. 
            In 1945, Bois appeared in The Spanish Main, which stared Paul Henreid. In his first of six movies he would appear in in 1948, was the melodramatic Arch of Triumph starring Ingrid Bergman. This was followed by French Leave with Casablanca bit actor Charles La Torre (Officer Tonelli), The Women in White with Casablanca actors Sydney Greenstreet and Creighton Hale (gambler) and Let's Live a Little with Casablanca actor Norma Varden (British tourist wife). 
             In 1949, Bois received a larger part in the drama Caught which also had Casablanca actress Ilka Grüning (Mrs. Leuchtag). He next appeared with Ludwig Stössel (Mr. Leuchtag) in the drama The Great Sinner with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner followed by the musical Oh, You Beautiful Doll with S.Z. Sakall. 
            Bois appeared in his last two movies in America in 1950, the last was portraying King Charles II in the swashbuckling adventure Fortunes of Captain Blood which also had Casablanca actor Alberto Morin.
            Never a leading man in America, Bois made some 45 films in the United States in 13 years. He then returned to West Germany to work another 40 years. Like many other actors who returned home, Bois found a different Germany. 
            His first appearance in West Germany was to star in a film adaptation of of the Bertolt Brecht's comedic play Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti) in 1955. In 1960, Bois portrayed a ghost in the comedy Das Spukschloß im Spessart (The Haunted Castle). After this, almost all of Bois' movies in West Germany were made for television. Bois lived in East Berlin, which cost him his American citizenship. 
            In 1981, Bois portrays an Swiss innkeeper trying to hide six refugees trying to escape Nazi Germany into neutral Switzerland in Das Boot ist voll (The Boat is Full). Throughout the 1980's, Bois would appear in ten television movies. 
            His last movie, at the age of 86, was portraying the aging poet Homer in the 1987 Wim Wender's Der Himmel über Berlin (Heaven over Berlin, but in America it was titled Wings of Desire). His total film career spanned 80 years and has put him in the Guiness Book of World Records for the longest acting career. 
            Bois died in Berlin on Christmas Day in 1991 at the age of 90. He is buried in the Städtischer Friedhof in Berlin (Friedhof is the German word for cemetery) with fellow German actors, Hans Nielsen and Alexander Engel. 

         Richard Anton Robert Felix was born on September 13, 1885 in Hungary. He began working in Germany as an actor and later became a well respected stage director at the Münchener Kammerspiele (Munich Chamber Theater). His first movie was 1932 comedy Die Verkaufte Braut (The Bartered Bride). The following year, he had a bit part in Muß man sich gleich scheiden lassen with future Casablanca star S.Z. Sakall. In 1934, Felix made three more movies, Weiße Majestät, Peer Gynt and Das Erbe von Pretoria in Germany before the Nazi's expelled him. 
         He emigrated to Hollywood and changed his name to Ryen. Ironically in Hollywood, as was the fate for so many German actors and actresses of that time, like Conrad Veidt, he was mainly cast in Nazi roles, which kept him working during the war years. 
          Working for Warner Bros., his first movie was as an uncredited role as a Nazi radio station manager in the anti-Nazi movie Berlin Corespondent in 1942 which starred Dana Andrews. Future Casablanca actors like William Edmunds (refugee), Torben Meyer (card player), Henry Rowland (German officer), Wolfgang Zilzer (refugee with expired papers) and Louis V. Arco (another refugee) also had small roles in the movie.
         Right after that movie, he received another small role as a German policeman in Desperate Journey starring Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn and Raymond Massey. He appeared on screen for 15 seconds while he is checking a license plate. It also featured other future Casablanca bit actors, Helmut Dantine (Jan Brandel), Ilka Grüning (Mrs. Leuchtag), Hans Twardowski (German officer with Yvonne), Henry Rowland and Louis V. Arco.
         Within weeks, at age 46, Ryen received his most renowned performance, that of Colonel Heinze in Casablanca, where he constantly had to tail his superior Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt). His scenes took four week to shoot and, at $400 a week, he earned $1,600.
        After Casablanca, Ryen appeared in 16 more films. His first credited film in America was in 1943, The Constant Nymph with Charles Boyer and Joan Fontaine. It was one of eight movies he appeared in 1943. Later in the year, Ryen played a Nazi officer in the war drama The Cross of Lorraine with Casablanca actors Peter Lorre and Hans Twardowski. In 1944, he appeared with John Qualen in An American Romance and The Hitler Gang showing the rise of Adolf Hitler, which also featured Twardowski. 
       With the end of the World War II, German actors playing Nazi's were not in demand and Ryen's role started to decrease. He received small roles in three movies in 1945; This Love of Ours starring Casablanca star Claude Rains, Salome, Where She Danced with Yvonne De Carlo and Paris Underground which also featured Casablanca bit actor Gregory Gaye. Ryen appeared in one movie in 1946, playing a butler in Crack-Up with Pat O'Brien, and his last movie, which was another small role in A Foreign Affair in 1948 with Marlene Dietrich. 
          In 10 of the 19 films he made in America, including Casablanca, he did not appear in the credits (unlike today, they did not put everyone who appeared in a movie in the credits). He also appeared on stage in America and after 1946 took guest roles at a theater in Basle, Switzerland, before becoming a freelance writer.
        Ryen died in Los Angeles on December 22, 1965 at the age of 80.

List of Usual Suspects