‘Casablanca’ actress Madeleine Lebeau, the film’s final surviving cast member, has died at the age of 92.
Her nephew confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter, revealing she passed away in Estona, Spain, at the beginning of May, after breaking her thigh bone.
Madeleine’s role in ‘Casablanca’ was a fairly small one, but nonetheless integral to the plot.
She played Yvonne, the spurned lover of Humphrey Bogart’s character, Rick Blaine.
In her most memorable moment, she is seen shouting ‘Vive La France!’, as drinkers attempt to drown out German soldiers’ singing with a rendition of ‘La Marseillaise’.
Madeleine starred in two further American films after ‘Casablanca’, ‘Paris After Dark’ and ‘Murder For Millions’, but later returned to her homeland of France at the end of the Second World War, where she enjoying several more French-speaking roles.
In 1940, Madeleine - who was Jewish - and her then-husband fled France during the Nazi Occupation, and headed across the Atlantic, where they eventually found themselves in Hollywood.
‘Casablanca’ was released just two years later, with the film telling the story of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, who falls in love with Ilsa (played by Ingrid Bergman), but must choose between his love for her or helping her husband escape Morocco to continue fighting against the Nazis in World War II.
Although the cast and crew didn’t expect it at the time, ‘Casablanca’ went on to become one of the most iconic films in cinema history, spawning a number of lines that are still referenced today including “here’s looking at you, kid” and “of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine”.
Upon her return to Europe, Madeleine later married the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tullio Pinelli, who she remained with until his death in March 2009, at the age of 100.
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