S. Z. Sakall

There is no truth to the claim that Ronald Reagan was initially intended to play Rick in Casablanca. That was studio hype. Humphrey Bogart was the first and only choice. What is true, however, is that S.Z. Sakall didn’t want to play the role of Carl, the headwaiter. Goodness only knows what the initial script looked like anyway, but he hated the part as he saw it. He agreed to take it for the money, negotiating for a guaranteed three weeks of work. It became his most iconic role and led the way to a lengthy career.

Gerő Jenő was born in Budapest. At eighteen, he started writing sketches for the local vaudeville, under the name of Szőke Szakáll, which translates to “Blonde Beard.” He had, it seems, taken to wearing a beard to look older. He was a staple on the stage in Hungary. He served in World War I, until he took a Russian bayonet to the chest. After the war, he went to Vienna and acted there, becoming a figure in the early Austrian Wiener film, a variety of lighthearted romantic comedy. He did some work in Berlin, and one of his movies had an American remake where his character was played by W.C. Fields.

In 1933, he returned to Hungary when the Nazis rose to power. He made over forty movies there. In 1940, he was invited to the US to appear in It’s a Date with Deanna Durbin. He brought his wife with him and left Hungary around the time the Nazis invaded. It saved his life; much of his family would be killed in the years to come. He would be naturalized as a US citizen in 1946.

He was, by all accounts, a sweet and pleasant man. Jack Warner dubbed him “Cuddles” because of his appearance. He was cast as the stereotypical “jolly fat man” quite a lot of the time, in part because he just came across as the kind of guy you’d love to spend time with. He retained his accent, which was foreign but not, to many Americans, identifiably so. Just from somewhere.

We are, this month, focusing a lot on that room full of refugees singing. It’s probably not possible now to know how many of them would be the only survivor of their families because they had the luck to escape to Hollywood. The idea of Hollywood as a land of dreams is overrated; there are dozens of stories of lifelong rejection for every Lana Turner randomly discovered at the Top Hat Café (not Schwab’s). However, for people like Sakall, it was literally life.