Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) and helping her husband (Henreid), a Czechoslovak resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on Everybody Comes to Rick's, an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson.
Peter Lorre was a Hungarian and American actor, active first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before moving to Germany where he worked first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lorre caused an international sensation in the Weimar Republic-era film M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls.
Hedy Lamarr was an Austro-Hungarian-born American actress and technology inventor. She was a film star during Hollywood's Golden Age.
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was a British-American actor. While he did not begin his career in films until the age of 61, he had a run of significant motion pictures in a Hollywood career lasting through the 1940s. He is best remembered for the three Warner Bros. films - The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Passage to Marseille (1944) - with both Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. He portrayed Nero Wolfe on radio during 1950 and 1951. He became an American citizen in 1925.
The Mask of Dimitrios is a 1944 American film noir starring Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Peter Lorre, and Victor Francen. Directed by Jean Negulesco, it was written by Frank Gruber, based on the 1939 novel of the same title written by Eric Ambler. Scott played the title role, of Dimitrios Makropoulos, in his film debut.
Samson and Delilah is a 1949 American romantic biblical drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and released by Paramount Pictures. It depicts the biblical story of Samson, a strongman whose secret lies in his uncut hair, and his love for Delilah, the woman who seduces him, discovers his secret, and then betrays him to the Philistines. It stars Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the title roles, George Sanders as the Saran, Angela Lansbury as Semadar, and Henry Wilcoxon as Prince Ahtur.
Paul Henreid was an Austrian-American actor, director, producer, and writer. He is best remembered for two film roles: Victor Laszlo in Casablanca and Jerry Durrance in Now, Voyager, both released between 1942 and 1943.
Ecstasy is a 1933 Czech erotic romantic drama film directed by Gustav Machatý and starring Hedy Lamarr, Aribert Mog, and Zvonimir Rogoz. Machatý won the award for Best Director for this film at the 1934 Venice Film Festival.
Algiers is a 1938 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, and Hedy Lamarr. Written by John Howard Lawson, the film is about a notorious French jewel thief hiding in the labyrinthine native quarter of Algiers known as the Casbah. Feeling imprisoned by his self-imposed exile, he is drawn out of hiding by a beautiful French tourist who reminds him of happier times in Paris. The Walter Wanger production was a remake of the successful 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, which derived its plot from the Henri La Barthe novel of the same name.
Boom Town is a 1940 American Western film starring Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr, and directed by Jack Conway. The supporting cast features Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill, and Chill Wills. A story written by James Edward Grant in Cosmopolitan magazine entitled "A Lady Comes to Burkburnett" provided the inspiration for the film. The film was produced and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Experiment Perilous is a 1944 American melodrama film set at the turn of the 20th century. The film is based on a 1943 novel of the same name by Margaret Carpenter, and directed by Jacques Tourneur. Albert S. D'Agostino, Jack Okey, Darrell Silvera, and Claude E. Carpenter were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White. Hedy Lamarr's singing voice was dubbed by Paula Raymond.
John Loder was established as a British film actor in Germany and Britain before migrating to the United States in 1928 for work in the new talkies. He worked in Hollywood for two periods, becoming an American citizen in 1947. After living also in Argentina, he became a naturalized British citizen in 1959.
H. M. Pulham, Esq. is a 1941 American drama film directed by King Vidor and starring Hedy Lamarr, Robert Young, and Ruth Hussey. Based on the novel H. M. Pulham, Esq. by John P. Marquand, the film is about a middle-aged businessman who has lived a conservative life according to the routine conventions of society, but who still remembers the beautiful young woman who once brought him out of his shell. Vidor co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Elizabeth Hill Vidor. The film features an early uncredited appearance by Ava Gardner. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
White Cargo is a 1942 American drama film starring Hedy Lamarr and Walter Pidgeon, and directed by Richard Thorpe. Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it is based on the 1923 London and Broadway hit play by Leon Gordon, which was in turn adapted from the 1912 novel Hell's Playground by Ida Vera Simonton. The play had already been made into a British part-talkie, also titled White Cargo, with Maurice Evans in 1930. The 1942 film, unlike the play, begins in what was then the present-day, before unfolding in flashback.
Crossroads is a 1942 American mystery film noir starring William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor and Basil Rathbone, and directed by Jack Conway. Powell plays a diplomat whose amnesia about his past subjects him to back-to-back blackmail schemes, which threaten his reputation, job, marriage, and future. The film was inspired by the 1938 French film Crossroads which had also had a British remake Dead Man's Shoes in 1940.
I Take This Woman is a 1940 American drama film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr. Based on the short story "A New York Cinderella" by Charles MacArthur, the film is about a young woman who attempted suicide in reaction to a failed love affair. The doctor who marries her attempts to get her to love him by abandoning his clinic services to the poor to become a physician to the rich so he can pay for her expensive lifestyle.
Her Highness and the Bellboy is a 1945 American romantic comedy film directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Hedy Lamarr, Robert Walker, and June Allyson. Written by Richard Connell and Gladys Lehman, the film is about a beautiful European princess who travels to New York City to find the newspaper columnist she fell in love with six years earlier. At her posh New York hotel, she is mistaken for a maid by a kind-hearted bellboy. Charmed by his confusion, the princess insists that he become her personal attendant, unaware that he has fallen in love with her. Her Highness and the Bellboy was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the United States on July 11, 1945.
The Strange Woman is a 1946 American historical melodrama film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders and Louis Hayward. It is based on the 1941 novel of the same title by Ben Ames Williams. The screenplay was written by Ulmer and Hunt Stromberg, Originally released by United Artists, the film is now in the public domain.
Let's Live a Little is a 1948 American romantic comedy film directed by Richard Wallace and starring Hedy Lamarr, Robert Cummings and Anna Sten. Written by Howard Irving Young, Edmund L. Hartmann, Albert J. Cohen, and Jack Harvey, the film is about an overworked advertising executive who is being pursued romantically by his former fiancée, a successful perfume magnate, who is also the ad agency's largest client. While visiting a new client—a psychiatrist and author—to discuss a proposed ad campaign, his life becomes further complicated when the new client turns out to be a beautiful woman, who decides to treat his nervous condition.
The Female Animal is a 1958 American CinemaScope drama film directed by Harry Keller and starring Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell, Jan Sterling and George Nader.
