MEANING

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/223900/heres-looking-at-you-kid-meaning

Here's looking at you, kid.

While I can guess at it, I was never fully confident about the meaning of this phrase. I am not a native speaker. It's clear that it's a toast. Would someone please explain in detail?

In more detail,

• Here's [to] because it's a toast
• Was this phrase a common American expression at the time?
• Why looking? Is it simply part of a common phrase or does it refer to looking at her as looking at a woman?
• Can you give me examples of similar (or the same) phrase, in context?
• Is the meaning unambiguous to native speakers or is there room for interpretation?

OK, technically, I am about to go off-topic here. These answers are so thoughtful, considered and just damn-well-good, that I wanted to vote for more than one.

Thanks for the answer, but this doesn't address the main part of my question. I think I wasn't clear enough. The "Here's to" part is quite clear, it's the rest of the phrase that I'm unsure about. "Here's to" is usually followed by a simple object. If it were "Here's to you" I wouldn't have asked the question. But "Here's looking at you" was confusing for me

BEST ANSWERS

The toast goes back more than half a century before the scriptwriters of Casablanca used it in 1942.

Viewed in that context, "Here's to the bride" may be understood as meaning "Here's [a toast] to the bride," and similarly "Here's looking at you" may be understood as meaning "Here's [a toast to] looking at you."

Best Answer:  It's not supposed to be grammatically correct. In the movie Casablanca, Bogart toasts Bergman, and he uses that line, "Here's looking at you, kid." When you give a toast you usually say, "Here's to Marco Polo for having adventures." In the movie though, Bogart is trying to illustrate that he loves looking at Bergman so that's why he says it. Bogart played a lot of gangsters in his movies, so he didn't always speak correctly. It doesn't take away from the beauty of the line, rather it makes it more poignant.

here's looking at you" is an American expression. It is a play on the card game of poker, when the face cards (JQK) are all looking at you: good news if you hold them; so when I lay my cards down and say this, well you have lost the hand

Supposedly, Bogart was teaching Bergman poker on the set during downtime. When he beat her hand by laying face cards (a hand that "looks" at you), he said the line to her to let her know he had won. She thought the line was funny and he became so stuck on saying it that he ad-libbed it during filming to see her reaction. It was kept and it became a famous movie quote. 
It doesn t really make sense to the viewer but it doesn t have to.The REASON it works and became famous is because the viewer believes it s real and that it makes sense to THOSE characters in THEIR world. It helps make the film successful due to the following theatrical elements and concepts:

Here's to my love![Drinks] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

Romeo is looking at Juliet when he toasts he with the poison.
Here's to is still very common in English. The shortened version is "To". It is unambiguous. In Casablanca, Richard says it to Ilsa, the woman he loves as he says goodbye to her. It is very much like Romeo used it.
"Here's to a long and happy life together" is a common wedding toast. It can be used with anything.

The meaning is quite unambiguous to this native speaker. If I may combine some ideas from the existing answers:

• Here's [to]: a toast, a statement of appreciation
• Looking at you: maybe best understood as, "it's good to see you"
• In the context of a toast this means, "I'm glad you're here and I hope to see more of you."
• Kid: an affectionate way of referring to a young person

The other literary examples previously mentioned all demonstrate the idea that, "Here's looking at you," is a statement of admiration. In the context of Casablanca it is used flirtatiously.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned that — in Europe particularly — there is a tradition that says that one must look directly into the other's eyes when toasting, or bad luck will befall one ("Seven years of bad sex"). So by saying, "Here's looking at you", the speaker is calling specific attention to the fact that s/he is honoring this tradition and expects that no bad luck will ensue. This may in fact be the origin of the phrase.

I imagine that in a heavy-drinking, toast-oriented social environment, few dedications would come to the befogged mind more readily than "Here's looking at you," since the person addressing the toast is in all likelihood looking at the person thus addressed.

Evidently, the expression was widely viewed as being quintessentially American, which would make sense in Casablanca as another marker of Rick's Americanness.