Casablanca's Iconic Piano, the Most Romantic Movie Prop of All Time, Up For Auction at Sotheby's New York in December
On 14 December 2012, Sotheby’s will offer an icon of the Hollywood silver screen, the Paris piano from the Oscar award-winning Warner Bros. film Casablanca. The American Film Institute has ranked Casablanca the Most Romantic Movie of All Time and the Most Quotable. It is consistently found at or near the top of any list of great films. The romance between Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) is movingly established during the famous flashback scene in Paris at La Belle Aurore. The 58-key piano (est. $800,000/1.2 million) on which Sam plays “As Time Goes By” is the key prop in the intensely romantic scene. Casablanca won three Oscars in 1943 for Best Picture, Best Writing (Screenplay) and Best Director, with Oscar nominations in five other categories, including Best Score. The piano comes to auction on the 70thanniversary of the film, which premiered on Thanksgiving Day in 1942. The flashback at La Belle Aurore, with Rick and Ilsa leaning on the piano while Sam (Dooley Wilson) sings “As Time Goes By,” was the first scene filmed by director Michael Curtiz. The three drink champagne and Bogart utters his now immortal line, “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid,” while outside the café, loudspeakers announce the imminent arrival of the German army.
The piano was sold by Sotheby’s in 1988 to a Japanese collector and at the time the price paid was one of the highest ever achieved for a movie prop. This December, original auctioneer David Redden will be back in the saleroom to offer this important piece of movie history one more time.
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