Luxury

‘Casablanca’ piano has been sold for $3.4 million

By TIME
By TIME
US-BONHAMS-CASABLANCA PIANO
The piano from Casablanca on which Sam plays "As Time Goes By" is on display at Bonham's November 24, 2014 in New York. The piano of the famous movie "Casablanca", considered one of the best of all time and cemented the world famous actors Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, was auctioned Monday in New York at 3.41 million dollars. The piano orange with floral arabesques details appear in the cult scene in which "Ilsa" (Bergman) asked the pianist Sam, played by Dooley Wilson, who play the song "As Time Goes By" to get to the cabaret property his former love "Rick" (Bogart) in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. The instrument was the star of the auction "There's no place like Hollywood" ("There is no place like Hollywood"), which included more than 30 objects used in "Casablanca" (1942) and was organized on Monday in Manhattan at home Bonhams auction and Turner Classics Movies(TCM). AFP PHOTO/Don Emmert (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)
Photograph by Don Emmert — AFP/Getty Images

This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com

By Per Liljas, TIME

The piano on which Ilsa famously asked Sam to play “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca was sold at a New York auction on Monday for $3.4 million.

A miniature instrument, and golden yellow in color, the piano is hard to recognize as an iconic prop from the 1942 blockbuster, which featured Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa, Humphrey Bogart as Rick and prominent African-American jazz drummer and band leader Dooley Wilson as barroom pianist Sam. (Remarkably, since posterity remembers him as a pianist, Wilson did not actually play the piano, but had the keyboard tinkling for Casablancaoverdubbed.)

Scene From CasablancaA scene from “Casablanca, featuring Humphrey Bogart as Rick and Dooley Wilson who portrayed piano player Sam.Photograph by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

Despite the piano’s diminutive size — it has 30 fewer keys than normal — it didn’t fail to upstage the other movie memorabilia on sale at Bonhams. The Cowardly Lion costume from The Wizard of Ozcame closest, fetching $3.077 million.

Catherine Williamson, the director of entertainment memorabilia at Bonhams, said that the Casablanca piano is such a significant piece because Humphrey Bogart hides the letters of transit, his only possible escape from Morocco, in the instrument.

“Fifteen minutes into the movie, he tucks them in there,” she told the New York Times. “They’re under there while Sam plays; they’re there for all of the activity that happens in the cafe. The piano is there. It represents the way out for them. That’s what made it so important.”

The letters of transit were sold separately for $118,750.