A star piano gains value, as time goes by
Published 4:00 am Friday, December 14, 2012
- The piano used in the 1942 film “Casablanca” will be auctioned off today at Sotheby's in New York.
NEW YORK — Here’s looking at you, piano.
No one would mistake you for Ingrid Bergman, though you and she shared a moment. And what a moment it was. It made you one of the most famous pianos in movie history. You must remember that: The flashback scene in Paris, the one that turned “Casablanca” from simply a war story into one of the most enduring cinematic love stories ever told.
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Now you are to be auctioned off at Sotheby’s by an auctioneer who has sold other famous movie props — the “Rosebud” sled from “Citizen Kane,” for example. Sotheby’s expects you to sell from $800,000 to $1.2 million in the auction today. That is 34 to 48 times what Bergman was paid for sharing top billing with Humphrey Bogart.
And she really had to work. She was in scene after scene. You appeared in only one, in the Parisian cafe known with the words “La Belle Aurore” on the window. Warner Bros.used a different piano in the scenes in Rick’s Cafe Americain. That was the one Bogart slipped those “letters of transit” into, not you.
You were not on camera for long — only about one minute 10 seconds. And while you were seen, you were not heard. Dooley Wilson, who played Sam, moved his hands up and down your keyboard as he sang. But he was not actually hitting any notes. Somewhere off camera was a real pianist, performing on another piano.
The piano is weathered, and a bit sluggish. It cannot handle the thrill of a trill, as Michael Feinstein — the pianist and singer who, with Ian Jackman, is the author of “The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in 12 Songs” — found when he tried it at Sotheby’s on Monday.
“It’s not gratifying to play,” he said, “but that’s not actually what it’s about.”
“Casablanca” was shot in black and white, but in real life, the piano is green and tan. Sotheby’s said it still had several coats of paint, apparently left over from appearances in other movies, when a Los Angeles collector bought it in the 1980s. He scraped off the layers, revealing colors that “Casablanca” audiences could only guess at.