Posted on 08/02/2020 5:59:10 AM PDT by Twotone
You'd think if you'd appeared in three movies considered among the greatest of all time, yours would be a household name.
Yet the machinery of celebrity operates on inscrutable Laws, sometimes running counter-clockwise: Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, W.C. Fields — movie stars all, but how many can name three of their films?
The average (or even above average) person likely wouldn't recognize Marcel Dalio's name, but odds are (no pun intended) they know his face – he's the most familiar croupier in cinema.
And he gets the punchline in one of Casablanca's most famous scenes.
However, there are underrated bits of hilarity in Casablanca (1942) too, such as this exchange between a hoity-toity couple in the club, who insist on having Rick join them at their table, and Carl the waiter, whose jowls jiggle at the very notion:
MAN (to Carl): Perhaps if you told him I ran the second largest banking house in Amsterdam.
CARL: The second largest? That wouldn't impress Rick. The leading banker in Amsterdam is now the pastry chef in our kitchen. (...) And his father is the bell boy.
Why bring that up? Because what differentiates haute coutre from ready-to-wear clothing are details no one but the customer, the designer and the seamstresses will ever be aware of: Stitching so fine it is practically invisible, and boning placed at the exact spot, based upon the client's measurements, where it is most needed. Likewise, what helps make Casablanca great was the brilliant but covert decision to cast actual European refugees as co-stars and extras:
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Dalio’s wife, actress Madeleine Lebeau, played Yvonne, Rick’s intermittent girlfriend in Casablanca.
On 22 June, while Lebeau was filming her scenes, Dalio filed for divorce in Los Angeles on the grounds of desertion.
"critics' identic commentary...gives the impression of students copying over each other's shoulders during a test."
This is the impression I get when I watch the news reports.
I perceive similar lack of depth in the so-called "journalists" and "reporters" of the MSM.
That’s one interesting life.
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