Arguably the greatest scene in what many consider the best movie of all time belongs to French actress Madeleine LeBeau in Casablanca.
She played the tragic, drunken beauty Yvonne, Rick’s jilted lover who comes to Rick’s Café Américain on the arm of a puffy German officer—presumably to stick it to Rick. When Victor Laszlo leads exiled patriots in “La Marseillaise” to drown out the minority Germans’ “Die Wacht am Rhein,” Yvonne joins in with all the soul-shaking passion of a lost woman. Partway through, she shouts, “Vive la France!” And steals the show.
The last survivor of the Casablanca cast, LeBeau died May 1 at the age of 92. Variety reported her death two weeks later.
LeBeau’s real life, as we learn from the tributes that marked her death, was equally stirring—but with more of reality’s grit than Hollywood’s gauze. She was a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied France and escaped with her then-husband, who also acted in Casablanca, to Lisbon and eventually to Hollywood.
