75 years since the release of Hollywood classic Casablanca
“And what if you track down these men and kill them? … Even Nazis can’t kill that fast”
By
Joanne Laurier
22 November 2017
As part of the celebration of 75 years since the premiere of Michael Curtiz’s classic and beloved melodrama, Casablanca, in New York City on November 26, 1942, the film was recently shown in select cinemas in the US. This was made possible by Turner Classic Movies, Warner Bros. Entertainment and TCM Big Screen Classics Fathom Events.
Still enormously popular to this day, the movie is an elegant, textured tale of World War II political intrigue, featuring an iconic love triangle. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains, Casablanca was nominated for eight Academy Awards.
The final script for Curtiz’s work, labored on by numerous individuals (including Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, Howard E. Koch and the uncredited Casey Robinson, among others), is responsible of course for a number of Hollywood’s most memorable lines.
Bogart plays a nightclub-casino owner in the North African city of Casablanca, then under the control of Vichy France, who is drawn into anti-Nazi efforts after his great love (Bergman) shows up at his establishment.
The film began life as an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, written in 1940. Burnett, an English teacher at a Manhattan high school, visited Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 and was horrified by the fascist criminality and persecution of the Jews.
Warner Brothers bought the rights to the play in December 1941 for $20,000. In fact, the studio received the manuscript for consideration one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. The entry of…