In one of Casablanca's most stirring scenes, Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo conducts “La Marseillaise” in a musical battle with the German song “Die Wacht am Rhein” (photo below). The skillfully intertwined score of the two songs is just one achievement of music director Max Steiner and a highlight of Henreid's role in the film.

Paul Henreid (Paul George Julius von Hernried, 1908-1992) played Victor Laszlo, Ingrid Bergman's suave, crusading husband in Casablanca. He often played the worldly European in a variety of films of the 1940s and '50s. He later directed the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” series and other TV productions. Henreid was born in Trieste (then an Adriatic naval port belonging to Austria-Hungary), the son of a Viennese banker. He was “discovered” by Otto Preminger in 1933, when Preminger was working with Max Reinhardt in Europe. Henreid was a well-known actor on the stage of Reinhardt's theater in Vienna from 1933 to 1938. Forced out of Austria and Germany by the Nazi takeover, Henreid went to England in 1935 and made several movies there, including Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939) and Night Train to Munich (1940). He went to Hollywood in 1940, where he had a long career as an actor and later as a director of films and television productions.

Henreid, himself a real-life refugee, was not happy about the basic flaws in the screenplay's treatment of his character, the underground leader Victor Laszlo. He correctly thought that it was more than ludicrous for Laszlo to openly run around Casablanca, visiting nightclubs in a conspicuous white tropical suit, and talking to Nazis. Henreid might also have asked why a Czech freedom fighter has the typically Hungarian name Laszlo. (Hungary was an Axis power during WWII.) And if he's such a thorn in the Nazis' side, why don't they just eliminate him? They certainly did much worse in reality.

If Henreid was right about the problems with his role, he was neither gracious nor correct in his assessment of co-star Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Henreid felt Bogart played his Rick Blaine character as a man who was “like a crybaby” and “sorry for himself.” The suave, Old World Henreid apparently did not approve of Bogart's coarse manners either. He later dismissed Bogart with the remark: “Before Casablanca he was nobody. He was the fellow [about whom] Robinson or Cagney would say, ‘Get him.’ Bogart was a mediocre actor.” Henreid was still bitter about Casablanca up until his death in 1992.

Ingrid Bergman and other observers disagreed with Henreid's view. (She later characterized the courtly Austrian actor who played her on-screen husband as dull.) Indeed, most critics feel that Bogart's acting in Casablanca was one of the main reasons for the film's success. He was nominated for an Academy Award, although he lost to Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine. The Rick Blaine role in Casablanca brought about a big change in Bogart's career, turning the former “gangster” into a romantic star.

Illness and his work on Now, Voyager (along with Claude Rains) almost kept Henreid out of Casablanca. Curtiz was able to shoot around Henreid until the Austrian actor was finally available for his first scene—the arrival at Rick's—on June 25, 1942, one month after shooting started. Henreid, along with each of his co-stars, went down in history as one of the fine actors in a great film classic. But while Bogie, the actor Henreid thought so little of, was able to capitalize on his Casablanca stardom, Henreid's career as an actor was virtually over only a few years after he played Victor Lazslo. The stiff, rather unromantic role he played in Casablanca seemed to cancel out his success as the highly romantic lover of Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. By the late 1950s Henreid had turned mostly to directing a few movies and television productions such as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” and episodes of “Bonanza.” He retired in 1977.

Other Films with Henreid: "Joan of Paris" (1942), "Now, Voyager" (1942), "In Our Time" (1944), "Hollywood Canteen" (1944), "The Spanish Main" (1945), "Song of Love" (1947, as Robert Schumann), "Rope of Sand" (1949), "Last of the Buccaneers" (1950, as Jean Lafitte), "Meet Me in Las Vegas" (1956), "Live Fast, Die Young" (1958, director), "Dead Ringer (1964, director), "Operation Crossbow" (1965), "Exorcist II" (1977).

More Casablanca People in Part 2: Peter Lorre, Max Steiner, Curt Bois, Helmut Dantine, S.Z. Sakall, Ludwig Stossel, Wolfgang Zilzer, and more.

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