Casablanca piano fetches over $600,000 at Sotheby's

PanARMENIAN.Net - A piano that features in the classic 1940s film Casablanca has been sold for more than $600,000 at an auction in New York, according to BBC News.

The upright piano appears in one of the film's most iconic scenes, in which Humphrey Bogart's character Rick utters the line: "Here's looking at you, kid."

It was sold to an unknown buyer at Sotheby's in New York.

The piano had been offered for sale by its Japanese collector owner to mark the film's 70th anniversary. It was expected to sell for as much as $1.2m. The owner originally paid about $154,000 for the piano at auction in the late 1980s.

It is used in the film by pianist Sam, played by Dooley Wilson, to play the song As Time Goes By during a key flashback scene set in a Paris bar.

Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, delivers the famous line as he and Ingrid Bergman's character Ilsa Lund lean on the piano, toasting with glasses of champagne.

The piano's sale marks the 70th anniversary of the Oscar-winning World War II classic, which is largely set in the Moroccan port city of Casablanca, then part of unoccupied French North Africa.