Casablanca Included in Michael Curtiz Fest at UCLA

On Friday, Jan. 5, 2018, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, in association with the Hugh M. Hefner Classic American Film Program, will kick off a salute to director Michael Curtiz with a showing of one of his most famous movies, Casablanca (1942), on a double-bill with Kid Galahad (1937) in the Billy Wilder Theater.

Film noir expert Alan K. Rode will curate the series and introduce each film. Mr. Rode will also sign copies of his new book Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film (University Press of Kentucky, 2017) before and between each screening, with the exception of Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018.

The program begins at 6:30 pm with the book-signing. Casablanca will be shown at 7:30 pm, with Kid Galahad (1937) to follow.

The festival will run from Friday, Jan. 5 to Saturday, Mar. 17, 2018. The complete schedule is available on the UCLA Film and Television Archive website.

Tickets for the Casablanca / Kid Galahad double-feature are $9 general admission and $8 for non-UCLA students, seniors, and UCLA Alumni Association members. ID is required for students and Alumni Association members. Current UCLA students with ID are eligible for one free ticket to any Archive show.

General admission tickets may also be purchased on-line through the Festival website for $10 each. Tickets may be called for at the Billy Wilder Theater box office, which opens one hour before the first show.

The Billy Wilder Theater is located at the Courtyard Level of the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, at the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, California.

For more information, please call the theater at 310-206-8013.

Parking is available in the lot under the Billy Wilder Theater. Enter the lot from Westwood Boulevard, just north of Wilshire Boulevard. Parking for the disabled is provided on levels P1 and P3. On Saturdays and Sundays, the fee is a flat rate of $3.

The venue is also well-served by public transportation.

More information about parking and public transportation, as well as directions, may be found on the venue’s website.

Casablanca was the first of two movies in which Peter Lorre worked with Michael Curtiz. In the pages of The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre (University Press of Kentucky, 2005), Stephen Youngkin describes a story Peter told to a Humphrey Bogart biographer about the time Peter and Bogie “blackmailed” Michael Curtiz into a sense of humor.

The film was Passage to Marseille (1944), and the two pranksters began telling long stories – and if Curtiz did not laugh, they deliberate fluffed their lines. Peter reported it took the director a couple days to figure out that if he laughed, he got the scene in one take.

The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre is available in both soft-bound and hard-back, as well as the Kindle and the Nook.