Casablanca piano sells for $2.9m in New York auction

NEW YORK: -- A piano from the classic 1940s film Casablanca has been sold for $2.9m (£1.9m) at an auction in New York.

The instrument was sold along with over 30 items from the World War Two drama by Bonhams in Manhattan.

Pianist Sam, played by Dooley Wilson, sang As Time Goes By in the movie for actors Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

The piano was one of two used in the film and it had been owned by Los Angeles dentist Dr Gary Milan.

He said the piano came with chewing gum under the keyboard but that the owner of the fingerprint embedded in it was unknown.

The piano featured prominently in the triple Oscar-winning film which was largely set in the Moroccan port city of Casablanca.

Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30183262

-- BBC 2014-11-25

Well, a piano has 88 keys. That's about US$33,000 per note. I hope it sounds good.

Loved the movie. When I had a 10 day holiday in the middle of a Peace-Keeping tour in Croatia back in '92/93, I had a bit of a screw-up. I had planned on renting a car and driving to Germany to see old friends, but had forgotten my International Driving Permit back at the camp.

Standing at the Zagreb Airport I saw the Lufthansa office and decided to go with Plan B - a trip to Morocco. I was going to Casablanca to see all the places shown in the movie !!

The ticket agent quoted me a price from Zagreb to Frankfurt to Morocco. About 1,300 Deutsche marks at the time ! I asked if it was that much just to go to Morocco and back, how much more would it be to go all the way to Thailand (Plan C) and back ? He did a quick check and told me 1,700 Deutsche marks. Well, if it was only going to be 400 DMs more to go all that way and back, sign me up !

So glad I did that, for a couple of reasons. Turns out that the closest that whole movie ever got to Casablanca was looking at a map ! It was shot entirely in California !!!! At Warner's Burbank Studios (and one scene at the Van Nuys airport - not "that" scene, but an earlier one).

There is a hotel in Casablanca that named their bar "Rick's" because of the movie, and for awhile they even had a black (Canadian) guy playing the piano (by coincidence, the group he was playing with got stranded overnight in Casablanca and the hotel ended up offering him a job. Now it seems a lot of other hotels also have piano bars with a "Sam" ready to play "that" tune").