Casablanca

saying we are reading and talking about a trap. And it's a school for X-ray and X-ray.

There is a man without a name. He will have to put him in the picture. He is a good guy. But it's still all about it. For bringing your time together with HBO Max, streamers and Harry Potter, a night off the Seven Kingdoms, Superman and a lot more. Up yet, HBO Max. Hello and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them let alone a good one.

“Let alone what I think many would agree is one of the greatest films of all time. I am one of your hosts Lizzy Bassett here as always with Chris Winterbauer and Chris. What are you? What do you got for us today?”

Hey, it's looking at you, kid. Here's looking at you, kid. Didn't remember how many times we said here's looking at you, kid, in this movie.

But we are talking about Casablanca. As Lizzy mentioned, widely considered one of the greatest films of all time. If you watch it on HBO Max, Ben Mankovitz does an introduction in which he calls it the greatest studio film ever made. His opinion. He reminds you. Lizzy had you seen Casablanca before and what were your thoughts upon watching or rewatching it for the podcast. I had not seen Casablanca since I was probably pretty young. Like arguably too young to really understand what I was watching and also what the kind of historical implications of it were, which I'm sure we're going to get into today.

You know, it's one of those ones that I hadn't revisited and I don't know why and I'm really glad that I had to watch it again for the podcast. It is an incredible movie. I think unbelievably well written, performed, directed. The thing that struck me on this viewing though is, and maybe it's the way Ingrid Bergman plays it because I think she's amazing in this.

“To me on this viewing, it was almost ambiguous as to how much she means what she's saying to Rick. I think when I was younger, the sort of dire straits that she's in weren't as clear.”

And it made Rick a much more complicated character in this viewing because he almost like kind of has her over a barrel there in the middle part of this or in the last act rather of this movie. And it did for me kind of call into question how much is she just trying to get those papers and how much does she mean what she's saying? And I think that's a testament to her performance as a testament to the writing and I think they were willing to have this be maybe more ambiguous than I think we would be comfortable with now.

Also, Rick's an asshole. I think I think he's kind of a huge asshole. And he and his asshole friend Claude Reigns just walk off into the sunset at the end of this, which you know, the turn of Claude Reigns's character did kind of make me laugh because it comes absolutely out of left field, although I'd really enjoy him in this as well. And I just have to call out Paul Henryd, who is so wonderful in this movie. It's so funny almost to pit him against Rick because it's like my god, he's beautiful.

Continental. Yes. He's always described. He's beautiful. He's tall. He's so soft. He's got like gorgeous hair.

He's an actual hero. You know, spent a year in a concentration camp and is like fighting for what's right. And then there's just Rick drunk in a corner being like, I don't really care about anything.

“You know, it does make you wonder. Did she love Rick? I think she did.”

But I think she's trying to get on that plane with Paul Henry. I know I would. That's my review of Casablaka. Yeah. Me too. Get me out of here. Get me on that plane with Paul. So first of all, the one of the reasons I wanted to cover this movie were doing our Oscar's coverage and it seems like Warner Bros. May garnered a best picture when this year at the time of this recording. With it seems like maybe likely one battle after another, if not maybe sinners. And this is considered if not one of the greatest studio films certainly the greatest Warner Bros. film, you know, of all time at one best picture.

No, you know, big spoilers in 1943. It's also one of my favorite resistance films. We'll talk about the political angles of this movie, which I think ties in with a lot of movies that are nominated this year. Obviously, it was just an accident in the international feature category the secret agent for best picture one battle after another arguably something like sinners.

And also confirms my theory, or let's say Len's Credence to my theory, that the real love story of this movie is between Ray Nolt and Rick, not Rick and Elsa. And she's you need any convincing. I will point you to the same line that Loren's heart does in blue moon. When Ray Nolt says, well, Rick is the kind of man that, well, if I were a woman, and I were not around. I should be in love with Rick. But what a fool I am, talking to a beautiful woman about another man. Fool indeed, which brings me Lizzie to my take, which is actually a bit different than yours.

“I love Angry Bergman. I think Elsa's character, I don't think they figured her out, and we're going to get into the writing process.”

A lot of people consider this movie one of the greatest romances on screen of all time. I do not agree with that. I don't think. I don't agree either. I really struggle with the romance in this movie. My least favorite part of the movie is the Paris flashback. It really bumps me. I don't like it at all. But I love the rest of the movie. I will absolutely adore it. I agree. Paul Henry is the statuous epitome of style and goodness and class, and he is so handsome, and when they play, let me

say as kind of shortly after the midpoint of the movie, and Rick gives the nod after Losslov has called for it. I love that scene so much. I like Rick as a character. I agree deeply flawed. I'm a Bogart fan from the time. Oh, I should be clear. I love him. I think he's great in this.

Yeah. It's an interesting movie where it's a movie that rests on one character finally making

arguably the right decision, although I think it's complicated. I disagree. I think Rinalt is actually

“handled very well by cloud rains, and I think they did a good job of changing him from, as we'll”

discuss from the play that it's based on. And I actually find the turn. I think there is enough teased out at the beginning that he's kind of ready for somebody to give him a reason to go against the Gestapo by the end that I buy it at the end of the movie. That works for me, but I might be alone. Again, Ingrid Bergman. We're going to talk a lot about her today. She is wonderful. I don't think she gives up by any means of ad performance. It feels as if there is a plot that they require

her character to either do or react in specific ways in order for the plot to happen and for other characters with more clearly defined perspectives to make certain choices. And so it feels like she's just kind of ping-ponged between two characters. I agree with you. You could read it ambiguously in certain ways. I don't think that that's the direction they were actually going for necessarily. And I don't think that's the way that she's playing it. And so I don't read a lot of

ambiguity into it just me personally. And so for that reason, that part of the story is the part that doesn't work for me at the same level that this ensemble really comes together in so many other ways. Do you feel that way even when it's revealed that she thought that Victor was dead when she was in Paris? Because to me, that's the thing that clues me into her kind of entire character and that

flashback is that she's basically like she's gone through the most traumatic thing that you could

probably go through at that point when she meets Rick. I don't track any of it to be honest very well because I don't track who Rick is in the flashback. It feels like he's such a different person. I agree with that. That is a turn that feels sharp. I don't buy Rick in the flashback because he feels so upbeat. I wouldn't necessarily say idealistic because there's not anything idealistic that they're talking about. But he is so happy go lucky. Almost devil-maker. But then when we

hear about his political background as explained by Reynalt, what he had fought for the loyalists in Spain, he had done gun-running in Ethiopia, I'm like, so where is this interlude where he's kind of like a hapless romantic in Paris? Those elements didn't, they don't come together. So for me, it's like when the movie is in Rick's bar, when we're in Casablanca, when we're in real time, this movie is a masterpiece. I love it. I adore, you know, again, every moment so many scenes.

So many of the supporting characters, Peter Laurie, Sydney Green Street, everyone's so good. To me, the flashback only confuses things and then I do not understand Elsa's character very well throughout the ending of the film. And I wonder what's her perspective, what does she mean, what's she going for? But it doesn't, I did not feel that it was in an interesting provocative way. I felt like it was in a confused, we actually just don't know, you know what I mean, sort of way.

Maybe part of why I feel that way is, as we'll discuss in the play, she's very different. And she's the character that changed the most from the source material to the finished film. Oh great, I can't wait to hear about it. My take, uninformed, which may change by the

end of this because you were very convincing as always, is that she does not want Rick to get on that

plane. You're saying she wants to go with Paul. Yeah, I think so. Well, let's dive in. Casablanca is a romantic drama directed by Michael Kirties. And I just want to mention,

“Kirties, that's how his name has been long pronounced, but his original name,”

the non-anglesized version, Kirties, I believe, is how it's pronounced. He's from Hungary. We'll get there. The screenplay is credited to Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch.

We'll get to him. It is based on an unproduced play, everybody comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett

“and Joan Allison. It was produced by Hal B. Wallace. And it stars Humphrey Bogart,”

as Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman, as Elsa Lund, Paul Henryd, as Victor Laslow, Cloud Rains, as Captain Louis Reynolds, Conrad Vite, as Major Heinrich Strasser, Sydney Green Street, as senior Ferrari, Peter Laurie, as senior Uguarte, and a really fun multi-s Falcon reunion. Dooley Wilson, as Sam, S. Z. Sakhal, who's miscredited as S. K. Sakhal, as Carl, and many, many, many more. It was produced in distributed by Warner Brothers,

under Jack Warner's Stewardship in Los Angeles. It was released in the United States on January 23, 1943, after it premiered in New York, two months earlier on November 26, 1942.

As always, the IMDB Logline reads, a cynical expatriate, American cafe owner struggles to decide

whether or not to help his former lover and her future to husband escape the Nazis in French, Morocco. That's it. That's what the movie is. He's got to make a decision. Sources for today's episode include, and guys, please read these books. There is so much on this movie, Holy Smokes. Casablanca, as time goes by, by Frank Miller. Round-up the usual suspects, the making of Casablanca, Bogart Bergman, and World War II, by All-Gene Harmets.

Starmaker, the autobiography of Howell Wallace, by Howell Wallace, and Charles Hayum. Casablanca, script and legend by Howard Koch, notice how everybody involved has a different statement than to take on this movie. We'll get into that Ingrid Bergman, my story, by Ingrid Bergman.

“You must remember this, the filming of Casablanca, by Charles Francisco. The genius of the”

system, by Thomas Schatz and many, many more articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film. Now, Lizzie, you mentioned the McGuffin of the movie already. The letters of transit. These are the things that will allow Lazlo and Ilsa to escape French Morocco to escape Casablanca and make their way to the United States by way of Lisbon. They are a pair of golden tickets. They are free transit through Nazi-occupied Europe, and whose names will be printed on

this fictional set of papers is the debate central to Casablanca. And, as we'll learn in this episode, the central debate of Casablanca is whose names will be printed on the fictional set of papers, known as the screenplay for Casablanca. So let's do a little World War II super fast history, Lizzie. Summer of 1941. How are things looking in Europe? Not great, Bob. Not great, Bob. So Nazi Germany had annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, and the Netherlands had fallen. France was

“taken in a very swift six weeks, as is seen in the flashback in the film. Yugoslavia fell in April”

of '41. The Greek Prime Minister committed suicide the day after Yugoslavia fell in April of 1941. A great Britain, as we know, is the last major European power between Hitler and complete continental control. And over in the United States, well, despite rick-like isolationist neutrality during the 1930s, Lizzie, things were kind of coming to a hit. You had two big factions, very simple isolationists like Charles Lindbergh, Father Charles Coffland.

They were saying literally, quote, "America First," we are protected by vast oceans, let the Europeans

sort out their own problems. Lindbergh was not mouths, too. Yep. And then there were interventionists who saw Western European democracies as a firewall against Nazi Germany. We need to help them. But within the interventionist there was division, right? Some feel military action is necessary. Some feel that they want to support Great Britain, but don't want to put boots on the ground. It feels very similar to debates. We've had recently regarding something like Ukraine, for example.

But public opinion was swinging rapidly toward interventionism. So as Churchill is attempting to convince the American government to join the fight over in the United States, a young story editor for Warner Brothers was trying to convince her boss to join a different fight because she had found

something incredible. Her name Lizzie was Irene Lee, and in that summer of 1941 she was in New York

to scout Broadway for stories to turn into feature films. She was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. She'd come to the United States to act and everything changed when she met director Mervyn Le Roy. He was at the peak of his powers at Warner Brothers. He's a big director. He's one of their top-named directors in the early 1930s. He'd done 23 films for Warner Brothers between 1933, he'd just done this big hit. I am a fugitive for a chain gang. He wants to cast Lee and he

gives her a script and he says, "What are your thoughts?" And Lee says, "I told him exactly what worked and what didn't and he looked at me as if he had just discovered oil." He said, "You really have a hell of a good story, mind?" She said, "Mr. Le Roy, I want to act." And he says, "Dalin, and I'm paraphrasing. You're not an honest new." He actually did say that. "You're 23 years old. You're close to deaths, but there are very few women in the business

who can do what you can do." So, Mervyn Le Roy brought her to Warner Brothers, and she landed a job working for Hal B Wallace head of production. Now, Mervyn Le Roy did not last long at Warner Brothers.

behind some of Wallace's best decisions, including the Maltese Falcon. Was he have you seen the Maltese Falcon? Yes, I have. I re-watched it for the pod. Very fun movie. Love Mary Aster in that movie. We'll talk about her a little bit as we get into the original version of Ilsa. So, this

1941 version of the film was the third attempt by Warner Brothers to adapt Dashll Hammett's thriller.

“They've done it in, I believe, 31 and 35. And it's the one that stuck. This is John Houston.”

It puts him on the map as a director and Humphrey Bogart, kind of little attractive, but in an unusual way, Humphrey Bogart is vaulted to the upper echelons of Hollywood. In fact, Jack Warner's original plan was to give Bogart's second billing after Mary Aster. But, around the release, they realize Bogart's a star, first billing, name above the title, and New York, I read Lee thinks I have found another gem. I have found the next Maltese Falcon. It is an unproduced play

called "Everybody Comes to Rick's." I can see why they named it that it's a bit cumbersome. What's going to change the name? Yeah. We're going to change the name, though. Okay. So, I doubt that Irene Lee recognized the name's under Rick's name on the cover page because it was written by respectfully a couple of nobody's in terms of Broadway and Hollywood. Mary Burnett was a high school teacher with dreams of becoming a Broadway playwright. And Joan Allison was a divorce say 10 years

“his senior with three kids and some contacts in the theater world and they had a really fun meet”

cute. They met at a beach club in Long Island. Burnett says she made fun of my formal attire. Allison says he came over and talked to her little boy which she thought was sweet, perhaps bold or true, but what we do know is that she offered to share a Burnett's play that he'd written. It was called an apple for the teacher with a producer friend. The producer friend likes it. He options it. The play falls apart. But then Burnett's world opens up. His uncle

presumably dies and he inherits $10,000. And he thinks, "I'm going to go to Europe. It's 1938."

He finally takes everything to Europe. He and his wife go to see her family in Antwerp.

And suddenly Hitler is a lot more than just a newspaper headline. Yeah. Nazi Germany had just annexed Austria. And his in-laws asked them to go to Vienna to help relatives get money out of Austria. Quote, "At that time Jews could leave if they took no money, nothing." So Burnett went to the American consulate for a visa and they said, "Look, if you get in any trouble over there, we are not going to come help you. We are neutral." The one piece of production he had,

he wore an American flag on his lapel. So the next part of this story, while in the south of France, he and his wife find themselves in a nightclub that's filled with expats from around the continent. Languages, liquor, flowing, and there's a black man playing the piano. And he turns to his wife and he says, "What a setting for a play." So back in New York, he tells Joan Allison, "No one can remain neutral. God damn it, Joan. No one can remain neutral." He had to pick aside and he decided

to write a play about the Nazis. But it wasn't Casablanca. They take this play to Austrian American theater and film director Otto Präminger, and they give him the pitch. It's a spy thriller, involving a million dollar collection taken up by the Pro Nazi German American Bund. It kicks off with the mysterious death of a female courier, a beautiful and heroic look-alike replaces her, and there's a frantic counterintelligence effort to keep the money out of Nazi hands.

It was called a million to one. And Präminger says, "Okay, I like it. But I want you to rewrite it under my direction." And they say, "No problem." And then they keep getting distracted by this other idea. This idea about a bar somewhere in Europe, where the liquor's flowing and the languages are flowing, and there's romance and refugees, and Präminger's like, "Why are you talking about this

other play? Please write the play. I've hired you to write." A million to one was never produced.

It's possible, Lizzie, that it wasn't neutral enough. Marie-Bernet claims that Otto Präminger caved to pressure from the Wheeler Committee to jettison the project. Basically, Senator Burton Kay Wheeler, he's a Democrat from Montana, was a leading spokesman for the non-interventionist America First Movement. Yes, we mentioned U.S. is officially neutral, and the Wheeler Committee was there to make sure anti-Nazi propaganda wouldn't pull the U.S. into armed conflict.

“Can I ask a question? Yes, please. I think I know the answer to this, but how”

aware was a the general public and be, you know, maybe the entertainment industry in terms of concentration camps at this point. Let's say 41. Based on what I found online, primarily pulled from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it looks like by 41, the U.S. population was pretty aware, really very aware of Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Even as early as, like spring of 1933, there were petitions with tens of thousands of signatures protesting the Nazi's treatments

had supported boycotting the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. And then in 1938, you have the ensues and with this comes this huge influx of these applications by Jewish refugees from Germany, and Austria, and this brings me to this really interesting data point. There was a survey done in

“1938. Do you approve or disapprove of the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany, 94% to disapprove?”

Should we allow a number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live? 71%. No. Now, this is before the mass murder of Jews by German killing squads, which would start in the summer of 1941, and the final solution would kick off actually right as Casa Blanca is kicking off at the beginning of 1942. But I don't think the U.S. population was as privy to that. Well, something I do think is interesting about this movie is that they do

quite a lot of gymnastics, I think, to actually avoid saying that Victor Lazlo is potentially Jewish in this. We will come into that as well. Alrighty. Or my guess about why this was the case.

So auto-premensor stays neutral a million to one doesn't get made. Burnett and Allison decide to go for it.

And they write, everybody comes to Rick's in the summer of 1940. They write it in about

“six weeks at Allison's apartment, and it's built around these fictitious letters of transit,”

which are just completely made up. And everybody just says, "That's fine. We're good with them. It's about Rick Blaine and his love interest of fellow American named Lois Meredith." It's an American name, if I've ever heard one. It is. Now, Joan Allison is quick to say that Lois Meredith was based on her. And Murray Burnett says that he identifies with Rick. And then Allison says, "Shut your mouth, Murray. You're a country boy." And then she says, "Both of my

husbands were wide-shouldered and fine athletes. And Rick was my concept of a guy that I would like Clark Gable." We should know, Joan Allison didn't like Humphrey Bogart. Thought that was pretty bad casting. Well, if you're writing Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart would not come to mind. That's right. So, let me talk a little bit about some of the differences between the play and the movie, because I just read the play. The broad strokes are very much the same. We have French Morocco,

we have Casa Blanca, we have Rick's bar, we have the letters of transit, we have its renaldo, it's not renaldo. And some of the names have changed, and we're going to do why they change, but it's major stracer. And the pieces on the chessboard are very much the same. Victor Lazzlow,

I would argue, is very much the same. Rick's past is explained, and it's not political. Basically,

he had a wife and two children in Paris, and he was a lawyer before he ended up running this bar in Casa Blanca. The big difference, though, between the play and the movie is the character of Louis/Elsa Lunt. Louis is, you know, a free woman who pursues relationships at her leisure, and very much feels in control. She walks in, and it's clear she broke Rick's heart back in Paris, because when they were having an affair, he was married, he was in a cafe, and she walked in with

another man, and he couldn't handle the fact that she was splitting her attention between two men, even though he was doing the same thing with two women, which she points out to him, and he gets a divorce and flees, and ends up in Casa Blanca alone in broken heart. She's now there with Victor Lazzlow, and it feels like, on the one hand, she is more of a Rick type, morally gray character at the beginning of this play, and Lazzlow, in some ways, represents

an opportunity for her to aspire to something greater, or pure, in some ways. In this version, was she married to Lazzlow technically in Paris, in the same way that she is in the final product, or she hadn't even met him when she was with Rick. So, in the play, Louis was not married to Lazzlow back in Paris when she was with Rick, although it's implied that she was seeing multiple men, or at least on-re, or Henry,

the person that Rick sees her with. She is now with Lazzlow, although again, it's not clear if they're married, I don't think they are married. Okay. But she sleeps with Rick, midway through the play. Okay. And while she's with Lazzlow, and again, you get something where

she's going to go with Rick at first, and it plays up much as it does in the movie, and then Rick

“ends up saying, "No, you need to go with him," and she leaves on the plane, and then Rick is actually”

arrested by Major Strasser at the end of the play. Ronaldo says, "Why did you do it, Rick?" and he said, "I did it for the bet. I did it for the five thousand francs that I bet you." That, you know, he would escape. It's really interesting Reed. I think that her character

little more difficult to parse. She has, I feel, a little more agency than in the Finnish film. It feels like she's a player, as well, in the proceedings. Well, it's just a completely different character. It's very different. I'm sure your Reed of this is probably right, because you have the background on how this was made, but I still don't view Elsa as not having agency in the final

product, because to me, like one of the most important things is why I asked that question,

is that she says, "You don't understand." He was my husband before Paris, and he is my husband now,

“meaning to me, I think that there is an underlying loyalty to Victor throughout Casablanca for her.”

And my interpretation was Rick is not the great love, and like that's kind of, to me, that's an interesting element of Casablanca, is that this whole movie revolves around this interaction that she had when she thought that the person she loved more than Nathan else in the world was dead. And what does this weird blip? What does Paris mean then in that context of her greater life, greater relationship, the meaning of her life, what does this mean? And that is interesting to me,

however, what you're describing is just a totally different person, and that is also really interesting, is in terms of Rick being married. I would say actually the backstory of what you just described that makes more sense to me is Rick, not Elsa. She makes sense to me either way, they're just different characters, but Rick, you're right about the turn in the movie. There's something strange about him having been a resistance fighter, and then he's in Paris, and then they're just escaping

Paris, and now he's not a resistance fighter at all, and it seems like he's lived a bunch of lives that don't necessarily connect, but they would in terms of what you just described. I agree, it's a very, very different character. And perhaps Aizen sees the wrong word. Let me rephrase it as it feels like Lois is more in control. Yeah, when she's in Casaponka, even just self assured than the way that Elsa is played, you know, or the way she's written in the

“finish film. But again, I'm not saying it would have worked better. Like there, I think we're a lot”

of structural problems in the play that they fixed. So let's dive into it. So the play, which did include as time goes by, which was not a hit. This was a song that kind of came and went in the early '30s, but Murray Burnett had loved it when he was at Cornell. So he put it in the play. The play gets the attention of Aizen and Watkins. She then gets it to producers Martin Gable and Carly Wharton for Broadway. They option it. And Lizzy, the big concern is Lois. Specifically,

Lois sleeping with Rick to get the letters of transit. And they say, "We can't do this." And I think Burnett, but I'm guessing Joan Allison, because she said that Lois was based on her.

I'm guessing that she was like, "Then we don't want to do it." They basically said, "We're not going to

change it." And the option was dropped. Wow. So then Watkins sent the play to Hollywood. The United States may still have been neutral. But Warner Brothers Lizzy was ready for war. Now, a brief background

“on Warner Brothers. It was founded by Polish Jewish brothers, Harry Albert Sam and Jack. Jack was the”

only one born in the Americas. He was born in Canada. And those are their Anglo-sized names. And Warner Brothers had been working on basically an anti Nazi campaign since 1938. So, pushed by Harry Warner, the eldest brother, who was based out of New York. The movie Confessions of a Nazi spy was the first explicitly anti Nazi film produced by a major Hollywood studio. And so, from what I've been able to put together, Jessie specifically is put together.

Irene Lee arranges for a copy of everybody comes to Rick's to be sent to Warner Brothers in the back half of 1941. It's also possible that Anne Watkins, you know, the agent had sent a copy, it's possible that Lee got it from Watkins. And to be clear, this is all pre Pearl Harbor, obviously. This is all pre Pearl Harbor. Exactly. So the United States is not yet entered the war. Now, either way, despite Warner Brothers' anti Nazi position, production head Hal B. Wallace

didn't initially bite on the story. I don't know why. It's possible he wanted to maintain

neutrality. It feels like a stage play. The play never leaves Rick's to be clear.

Yeah. Perhaps he was too busy with Warner's recent success. Warner Brothers had been a studio in that had fallen apart during the Great Depression in a lot of ways and it had skyrocketed during the 1930s. And then Lizzie as you mentioned on December 7, 1941, the myth of neutrality shattered when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. So following that attack the next day, production at Warner Brothers is ceased for the day. As FDR addresses a joint session of Congress,

he requests a declaration of war and a script reader named Stephen Carnett goes back to his desk and he plucks a manuscript from the pile. It sounds light-hearted. It's attached to a well-regarded lit agent. And on December 11, he writes a readers report for producers. And he says, "Everybody comes directs his excellent melodrama, colorful, timely background, tense mood, suspense, psychological and physical conflict, type-plating, sophisticated, hokem, a box-office natural for Bogart,

cagny, or raft, in out of the usual roles, and perhaps Mary Aster." She makes so much sense to

The report makes its way to how Wallace's desk and suddenly he thinks, "Well, this is great. I don't know why I didn't want to do it before, but uh, what's doing now? We're going to war." Now, the story needed work. But according to Wallace, quote, "The story of a iconic American solving the problems of European's would have definite appeal in those troubled times." I was like, "That's what you take away from this movie." That's not.

All right, what I'd do is a two-year-of-pins are the only ones doing anything. Yeah, okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah, this Victor Louseloga, I can't get anything done! So Wallace, though, is at the end of the day, a studio man, and you don't want to put your full

weight behind something without everybody else telling you that it's good too. This was never

“made into a play, it's my point, right? So you have to wonder, will it work?”

So he reaches out to a few producers. David Lewis, he was the romantic partner of Frankenstein director, James Whale, if you guys are unaware, and a prolific producer, Jerry Wald, who was also a screenwriter, who'd collaborated with Julius Epstein and Robert Lord, Oscar winning writer, one-way passage in 1933. So again, these are heavy hitters, successful producers. Lewis, I think the story needs work, but it is an attractive set-up. Wald could be good for George Raff, to Humphrey Bogart,

and could be modeled after the recent hit, Algears. And we should mention Algears, which was a Walter Wanger picture, would it be a bit of a blueprint for Casablanca? I think for how Wallace, especially, you've got a fugitive in North Africa, you've got a love triangle, it was an adaptation

of a French film from the year prior, and it was the Hollywood debut of Heddy Lamar,

more on her and a bit. Now, Lord wasn't so high on the project, he said, "I suspect that with enough time and effort a picture could be got from this very obvious imitation of Grand Hotel, somehow most of these characters and situations seem conventional and stereotype. If we buy this

“thing, I would not pay much money for it." Which I think, how Wallace said, like, "This is great!”

They generally like it!" And they decided the story needs work, and by mid December, he starts reaching out to potential writers. So Robert Buckner, who'd done Dodge City with Arrow Flynn, and also, Newt Rockney, all American, a great early football movie, and how Ronald Reagan got his nickname, The Gipper, if you're not familiar. He also co-wrote the upcoming Yanky Doodle Dandy, he'd get an Oscar nomination for that. He gets sent to play, and on December 31st, Wallace makes a

very important decision, Lizzie. He decides to change the name. Everybody comes to Rick's is going to be Casablanca, which is inspired by Algears. Classic. So a week later, Buckner writes back to Wallace, "Hard Pass." I don't like the story. I don't like the characters. This is sheer hoakum. And this Rick guy is two parts Hemingway, one part Scott Fitzgerald, and a dash of cafe Christ. To which I say, "That's kind of what I'm looking for." "Yeah!" "And my movies?" "That's a spot on!"

"Yeah, I know." Who cares what Buckner thinks? Wallace sends the script to his brother-in-law, Wally Klein, and Klein's writing partner, Anias McKenzie, and Wallace says that McKenzie had a flare for writing believable dialogue for European characters. "I don't know what that means, but good for McKenzie." McKenzie digs it. Says behind the action, and its background is the possibility of an excellent theme. The idea that when people lose faith in their ideals, they are beaten

before they begin to fight. That was what happened to France and Rick Blaine. Okay, I think he's cluing into something that may be interesting. "Yes, I agree, and also I love what do they mean when they say European. I feel like it's a euphemism." "Oh, a hundred percent. It's a euphemism." Now, I think I make these out of the way. "I'm so sophisticated on the stage." "Yes, one of my favorite parts is when the Germans are saying how they're going to America." And they say, "What

watch is it? Is it 10 watch?" And then Carl says, "You'll fit right in." That is one of my favorite jokes in the movie. "It's a very funny movie." "Yes, it is." "I do like the humor throughout this movie." I couldn't help but think how much glorious bastards borrow from Castle Blanco when I was watching this in particular. The whole bar sequence is... "I'm sure it's inspired by it in the way." "It has a whole treatise on language in many ways." And then Brad Pitt's Italian is one of the best

jokes of in glorious bastards. "Gorlamy." So bad. "Yeah." All right, so Mackenzie likes it but he thinks

“you need a big rewrite and you should hire me because Rick and Louis, this is Dicey. And he says the”

same thing that Broadway had. The action that arises between them is, quote, "A highly sensorable one." This is a tough job for anyone who it might be assigned. This is obviously Lizzy in the times of the Hayes code. And so Hollywood is very much under the thumb of the production code authority. So on January 7th, the trades catch wind of the project and they announce who's going to star. And Sheridan Ronald Reagan and Dennis Morgan to be starred in Castle Blanco. Lizzy's eyebrows

just went to the ceiling. Don't put Ronald Reagan in this. The Gipper is going to Morocco. So there was, as far as we know, no truth to this rumor. In fact, some people have actually theorized that how Wallace slipped these names falsely to the press so that they would circulate in order to promote an upcoming Anne Sheridan Ronald Reagan movie called King's Rail I believe, which was dropping in the beginning of February. So I'm pretty sure he did this to be like, "Go see the

first one and then the next one will come later." Two days later, Mackenzie and Klein start an

rework anything that might violate the Hayes code." This is very important. Yeah. So January 12th,

“Warner Brothers officially buys the rights to everybody comes to Rick's and just before the first”

American soldiers set off from the Brooklyn Army terminal to cross the Atlantic to join the fight. There's also another date given December 28th when they buy the script. This is the most commonly accepted date. So the studio paid $20,000, which was a pretty handsome sum for an unproduced play without a big name writer attached Lizzy any guesses to what that is in today's dollars. $20,000. $300,000. That's a very guess. It was somewhere on $430,000. Okay. So you're very close.

Also, by the way, if Ronald Reagan had started this, it would have been five minutes long. He would have been like, "You're right. I should go back to America." He's back on the play. What am I doing in this bar? Let's go home. He's left every one behind immediately. Gun, oh, back to America. Well, the deal may have seemed generous on paper, but it also seems like Burnett and Allison may not have completely understood the terms of what they were signing. So some have

said that they would later show this contract to a friend who would tell them, "This kind of contract went out with DW Griffiths. You haven't left yourself any rights at all." Oh, no. We'll get back to it. So right around this time, how Wallace signs a new contract at Warner Brothers, too. He goes from

being production executive, where he's basically overseeing all of the productions at the studio,

but, again, he doesn't have an on-screen credit, too producer. Like Jack Warner, Wallace was a child

“of Jewish immigrants. He'd been at Warner Brothers for nearly 20 years. I think there was a lot of mutual”

respect between him and Warner, but there was a power struggle, too, because Wallace had come up, I believe, as Jack's assistant. And so in 1937, just to show kind of the way that Jack Warner was seen as synonymous with the studio, Fortune Magazine released a piece on Warner Brothers 10-years zoom from the rank of outsider to the biggest thing in show business. And they basically say they didn't rely on a producing genius, like Solberg, Xannick, or Lasky, to be clear this would have kind of been

the Wallace position. Rather, Jack Warner was described as the, quote, "sepreme head of Warner Brothers production." So maybe a little bit of an ego here. Now, according to Wallace, he had wanted to do this for a long time. He had no home life when he was running all of the production. He had a growing son. And his new deal was advantageous in a lot of ways, so he would make four movies a year for four years. He gets a salary cut, buddy gets back in participation. So that's nice. He gets to cut his own

movies, but then Jack Warner gets final cut. And if you wanted to work with somebody not at Warner Brothers, he could hire them. And then perhaps most importantly, he gets an on-screen credit, which we discussed Lizzy with Bob Evans, in most recently the Cotton Club. In his first project, it's going to be Casablanca. So who Wallace went to for the role of Rick Blaine varies by source, but Lizzy, if you were not going to guess Humphrey Bogart, there's somebody we talked about a little

“bit in the Cotton Club. Any guesses? Oh, we talked about in the Cotton Club. Uh, can I get a hint?”

Can I get a phone a friend? Yes. Think a Bogart contemporary within like the crime genre, who may have been the inspiration for Richard Gears character in the Cotton Club. George Rafft.

You got it. George Rafft. Some like it hot. I will always think of him in that. Oh, yeah,

sound like a hot right at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Rafft said, no thanks. According to Wallace, he turned down parts pretty frequently, preferring to go on suspension without salary, then play them. And this was a very common tactic at the time. Betty Davis had been in a lot of scuffles with Jack Warner throughout the 1930s. In fact, Rafft had actually turned down a couple of movies in a row that had allowed Humphrey Bogart to really take off. So reportedly, he turned

down high Sierra, which is great. That would be one of Humphrey Bogart's breakouts. Then the Maltese Falcon, he didn't want to die at the end of high Sierra and he viewed the Maltese Falcon as a B picture, and all of a sudden, Boogie is up in his bidness. Well, you may also remember George Rafft, perhaps not the easiest to deal with. No, not at all. Uh, apparently neither maybe was Humphrey Bogart, because Wallace went to Bogart next, but quote, he was irritable about

playing another part George Rafft had rejected. They were about to be three for three. There was a bigger problem, Lizzie. Warner Brothers needed Carrie Grant for a movie. He was under contract at Columbia, which was run by Harry Cone, and they needed him to star an arsenic and old lace. Harry Cone says, "You can have Carrie Grant if you give me Boogie art for Sahara." I just assume everybody talks like this back then. Yeah. Columbia keeps switching the

dates on Sahara. I just can see Harry Cone be like, "Chains the dates. Let's fuck with us. I'm going to change my game." So Warner Brothers would be casting Boogie without knowing if he'd be available for Casa Blanca, because if they tried to pull him off of Sahara, they lose Carrie Grant. It comes very complicated. Didn't help that Jack Warner did not want Humphrey Boogie art. At some point before this, Jack Warner had reportedly commented that Boogie art's

list made him sound like a fairy. Cool. And Boogie art in turn allegedly spread a rumor that Jack Warner was gay. And it just goes to show you men have been the same for all of time. According to some sources, when Wallace pitched Boogie art for Casa Blanca, Warner yelled, "Who the hell would ever want to kiss Boogie?" Me, in a Nae Boogie kiss.

of course, I did nothing in Casa Blanca that I hadn't done in 20 movies before that,

and suddenly they discover I'm sexy." Anytime, Ingrid Bergman looks at a man, he has sex appeal. No, sir, it's because they shot him really well in Casa Blanca. He looks great in this movie.

“He looks great in that touch. I think it's the White Tux. They put in a nice amount of shoe”

polish on his hair, and they really filled it in, and he looks great. He did not shoot him so favorably in the other ones. No. George Rafft was out. Boca was attached in mid-February 1942, and the script, "Well, let's in progress!" So much of the movie is going to be written to Taylor Rick Toboggy. Klein and McKenzie were getting some help. Whether they wanted it or not, because Wallace had already reached out to writer Casey Robinson, who claims he was an early supporter of the play,

so in another version of the origin stories of Casa Blanca, Casey Robinson has said, "I read it on a train, and I suggested it to Wallace, and I wanted to produce it, and I was disappointed when Wallace decided to produce it." We could not verify that. That's just what Casey Robinson says. But we can verify. Is that Warner Bros. records do support Robinson's claim that he was the one who suggested changing the character of Lois Meredith from American to European?

So, Il Solund is born, and he had some very specific inspiration. Namely, he was falling in love with the Russian ballerina named Tamara Tumanova. In fact, he said, "Why don't you do a screen test with her?" So Wallace says, "Okay, set screen test for her, and and Sheridan, notably an American, and it's at this time that Wallace reaches out to the boys." aka the brothers, aka Julian Phil, aka Julius and Philip Epstein. They were identical twins in their early 30s. Julius had started

writing for Warner Bros. first. His brother joins him later. They go straight for a bit. They start as a team in 1938. Julius was Oscar nominated for four daughters directed by Michael Cortese. And they were known for adding a little zip to other writers' scripts. The Epstein's loved Casablanca. It's got a lot of juice. But they were already committed to the war effort. Because they were going to join Frank Capras, why we fight. So they made a special deal. We'll take a copy of the

script with us to the East Coast, and if we ever get a break from why we fight, we'll work on this. So Wallace says, "Fine, and he decides to find a director. And he goes after William Wyler, who just done the yet-to-be-released Mrs. Minnerver." And he was vacationing with his family in

Sun Valley, Idaho. Wallace sends him the script. And Wyler never gets back to him. Any guess as

Lizzie as to what he was up to? You're never going to guess. We've covered this before, haven't we? He was playing Gin Rummy with Darrell Zanik until 230 every morning and couldn't be bothered. Great. There's like war in Europe. He's getting scripts into him. He's like Darrell deal at that deck one more time. He's set up a bitch. He just can't stop playing cards. Wasn't he German?

“He's a German Jew. Yes. William Wyler is. If you want to learn more about William Wyler,”

you can listen to our episode on Ben Hurr. What's she directed? So Wallace, because he can't pull William Wyler away from the Rummy table, turns to Vincent Sherman, who had directed Humphrey Bogart in the return of Dr. X, Cloud Reigns, and Saturdays children, and he'd done a German Nazi resistance film called Underground in 1941. Sherman, I should know, also pretty young born in 1906. He also reached out to William

Keely, who had directed the Epstein Pent, the bride came COD. And quote, neither seemed to that excited about the project, so I ruled them out. That's not how Sherman remembers it. He says he was chatting in his office that January and a writer mentions a piece of crap that is being sent around, called everybody calms to Rick, and then Sherman was given a pack, given the copy of the piece of crap for feedback, and he claims he told the Epstein's about it, and then he went to the

Wallace to say that the Epstein's were interested in writing it, and he wanted to help right too, but Wallace said no, no, no, you're going to be too busy with your next movie. I just love everybody claims that they found this play. Everybody found this play. Of course, because it sounds like it's something that in reality, everybody rejected it and was like,

this is not the thing. I am Spartacus, everybody found this play. It's amazing. So finally,

Wallace goes to Michael Curtis. They'd worked on four movies together, and they'd actually been skit shooting on Curtis's ranch when they learned that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. And so weeks later, they're back at the ranch, shooting the skit, and Curtis agrees to join the fight to make Casa Blanca. On the plus side, Wallace knows Curtis can keep these scenes moving, to add a cinematic scope to this movie that may be lacking in the play. And Curtis had a really

“important unique connection to Warner Brothers, according to one source in 1938, Jack Warner had”

plans to travel to Europe, and Curtis asked him to stop off in Hungary and convince his mother and brothers to come to the United States. And he did. Wow. So Wallace later claimed that Curtis was his favorite director, a tall flamboyant, high-living Hungarian, who mangled the English language outrageously. This is true. Curtis had a body of work that preceded Warner Brothers as a studio. By the time he came to the United States in the late 1920s to work for Warner's, he had

dozens of films under his belt out of Austria, Hungary, and Denmark. He was very accomplished,

same with England Bergman. Wow. Super-animal integrator and talent. And the time and the money that I can't completely invest in. For all of us, in VaxTomb. Now, Wallace knew Curtis was "difficult." He was a demon for work, demanded the utmost from his

actors, and he never took lunch. In fact, he resented people who took lunch so much that

if an actor blew a line after lunch, he would scream, "You lunch, bum!" And that was the ultimate Cretis insult. Okay. I wonder how he got along with Joan Crawford on military peers. Perhaps we'll have to cover that. Well, we will, because what's so interesting is that, yes, he has a history

“of being combated, and I think some people might even say unsafe with his actors. He, I think”

impremously set Lily and Gish off on a nice flow in one of his early films, and she had, you know, permanent frostbite on one of her hands. Oh, Jesus. And he did what he wanted, like he would omit scenes. He didn't like. He would add scenes on planned. But his actors often received, like Oscar nominations, and some of the best reviews of their careers after working with him. So James Cagney got his only win with Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Joan Crawford got her only win as you mentioned

losing with military peers. Now, here's one story I found eliminating. So as I mentioned, he didn't

speak English. And so when he was going to direct his first American film, the third degree,

he didn't know anything about jail or Chicago or gangsters. So he goes to the L.A. Sheriff and convinces him to let him spend a week in jail. And then, quote, "When I came out, I knew what I

“needed for the picture." Oh, God. So he was very, very committed to prep. But Casablanca still didn't”

have a script. So let's get back into the writing. Leslie, so it's late February of 1942. Cline him to Kenzie submit their pages. They're done. And a couple days later, the Epstein's left for New York to join why we fight, copy the script presumably in their luggage. And Wallace was no script, but with a director and Humphrey Bogart searched for Rick Blaine's love interest. Now, he'd actually been pursuing Heddy Lamar over at NGM, but she was not available.

She would actually go on to play Elsa in a radio version of the movie. And then he inquired about Ingrid Bergman. Pellysie, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Ingrid Bergman or how much of a fan of hers you are, anything about Ingrid Bergman like come to my end as an actress or performer, thoughts, anything. Other than that, she's very, very, very, very beautiful. It's most of what Davido sells an exon her as well. Yes, very European, Swedish, and very, I don't know,

is stoic the right phrase. Tell me about Ingrid Bergman. I would say there's a Catherine Hepburni

“quality to her. I think despite her features, there can be a steeliness, you know, that I really”

appreciate to her performances. Gorgeous eyebrows. Very gorgeous eyebrows, notably two thick according to Davido sells Nick. So don't pluck them, they're great. And for transition from European to American cinema was somewhat complicated. So her breakout movie from the perspective of the United States was called Intermezzo. And this was a 1936 Swedish film which I watched. And I would just recommend people watch it. Especially the first 30 minutes are some of the most gorgeous 30 minutes you

will see in a film. It's very simple. She plays a prodigious young piano player who gets wrapped up in a love affair with a very prominent older violinist. But the first 30 minutes, the way that they lay out the character relationships and then you see how her character Anita Hoffman connects with the violinist is really wonderful. And it's just a really wonderful movie. And so Selznik sees this movie. And he brings her over and signs her in the United States. And her first job is going to just

be a shot for shot basically remake of Intermezzo called Intermezzo with Leslie Howard. So she's playing the same character again. And she doesn't speak any English. And she's really having to fight attempts

to change her look and get more complex roles. And part of the problem is I feel like Selznik feels

like he's bought this blonde Swedish beauty and we're in the era of typecasting. And so he's trying to sell her as this one thing. And she wants to be many things. But Selznik at this point of his career is kind of a de facto agent. So he owns her contract. And she can only work on non Selznik productions if he is willing to loan her out to other movies. And so he would actually loan her out and like hitchcock out, for example, at inflated prices. So he could pocket the difference.

But he wouldn't loan her out to a movie that he would feel could be damaging to her image or brand. Right. So Wallace needs Bergman and Selznik is ducking him. And Bergman is depressed. She's not getting the roles she wants. And even critics are noticing. So this one critic writes about rage in heaven, her fourth American film. Ingrid Bergman creates something of a mood of

be a black mark against it. You know, it's so interesting. I never really, because I hadn't really

looked at her filmography. It does feel like Casablanca becomes such a jumping off point for her.

“And I think that, you know, for example, her face is very inscrutable, which I think maybe is part of”

what you're reacting to in Casablanca. And then it works so well in Gaslight. And I feel like that's from that point forward is where she really is making the kind of stuff she wanted to be making. Also, I love Gaslight. Gaslight's great. She did have one good experience in this time. She really loved working with Victor Fleming on Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hyde. She loved Spencer Tracy, but then she took a break. And so she was spending a lot of time with her husband and daughter.

She's waiting for an offer to play Maria and for whom the bell tolls. The offer doesn't materialize and she's really restless. Basically, she feels divided. She feels like on the one hand,

I have a great home life. I have a husband and a child isn't that supposed to be enough for a woman,

but on the other hand, quote, "I think every day is a lost day as if only half of me is alive." And so she writes to Selznik. She's really frustrated. She's like, "When am I going to get into a movie?" He's promising her these productions that aren't coming to pass. And she would write about

“these roles that she wanted, like Gaslight, for example. But the only way Selznik's going to”

agree to get the rights to these things is if she can exchange signs like longer and stricter contractual agreements with him. So there was very much a quid pro quo going on with Selznik. And just to be clear, this child was not Isabella Rosalini and I'm assuming it was an older one. I don't think it was Rosalini. Got it. So, Ingrid Bergman is trapped in a relationship with David Selznik with no letter of transit. So that March, the Epstein's return to Hollywood with a whopping

40 pages of script. And two weeks later, they got 70 pages of script. And at the end of March, Wallace sends the sedited version to critis and on April 2nd, Jack Warner says, "Let's throw a curve ball." On the same day that this draft is to be submitted and copied, the draft that has been written for Humphrey Bogart, Jack Warner sends a memo to Wallace. He says, "What do you think about using raft?" He knows we're going to make this and he's campaigning for it. So apparently,

George Raff realized this was going to get made and it might be kind of good, so I should actually

“probably do it. That's so weird. He seems really wrong for it and retrospect. I think he sounds”

really wrong for it. Now, Wallace claims he discreetly ignored it. Several other sources claim that he wrote back, basically, Bogart's ideal for this. Also, we shouldn't allow raft to just flip flop on projects like this. Yeah. Wallace was still fighting for Bergman. So he sends in the big guns. He sends in the boys. AKA Julius and Philip Epstein. And they go in to pitch Celsnick, Casablanca.

Here's the quote from the Epstein's. He was eating soup. He never looked at us. We were throwing

him some of the details of the story. We spoke for 20 minutes. We didn't even mention the character of Ingrid Bergman. I finally looked at Celsnick and said it's going to be a lot of shit like the film Algiers. He looked up for the first time and nodded. And we had Ingrid Bergman. That was the story. David Selsnick was so weird. Yeah. You know, again, and then Wallace says he's the one that closed Celsnick. So who knows? Sure. But Wallace needed a backup. So he tested different actress,

French actress Michelle Morgan, but RKO demanded $55,000 for her services. Bergman comes in for 25 grand. Celsnick pockets the difference. Whatever that was. Now, and it turns out that Bergman was available because Paramount had gone with Vera Zarina as Maria and for whom the bell tolls. So in a sliding doors moment, if Bergman had gotten that role at that time, which she would eventually get, we would get there. Right. She would not have been available for Casablanca. So some people have

said that Bergman was initially not excited about the role of Elsa. That doesn't seem true because when she got the news, she wrote to a friend about how excited she was to work again. She says the picture is called Casablanca and I really don't know what it's about. And then she read the script or she learned about a role and her excitement was tempered. So just a couple other casting notes, a week later, singer drummer and actor Arthur Dooley Wilson was cast as Sam. Now he does not play

the piano in real life so he's mocking it though very effectively and then they dubbed that later. But I would like to call out that David also pointed out there's a shot where you see Sam playing at the piano and you're watching over the drum set and the drummer is about a foot away from the symbols. It is a hundred percent. Yeah, as you hear the symbols crash. Yes. Now originally Wallace had wanted to cast a woman in the role, like elephant sterled or horn or hazel Scott. Yeah,

which is interesting. Now again, we can't dive into all of the roles because it would just take too long but I want to note 75 person cast at least 24 were European refugees from Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary and France. Of the 14 cast members who got on-screen credit only three had been born in the United States. And because many of the actors were on loan from other studios, their salaries were higher than usual. Unfortunately, that didn't mean they were getting paid more. It just meant

the studios were pocketing the difference. So they set production for mid-May 1942. And the only problem Lizzie is that they've only got about half the script. So they pushed a whole two weeks to May 25th of 1942 and I have to imagine everybody's taking whatever sales Nick was taking during gone with the wind at this point. Yeah. So by now they've got another writer on the script.

produced while he was directed Betty Davis starred in, but he was best known, Lizzie for co-writing

“the radio play adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Uh-oh. So Wallace said that he'd”

hired Koch to write an alternative screenplay to be on the safe side. Now, Koch said it was because the Epstein's pitch to Selznik was a quote, "feet of verbal hoax pocus without any real substance to provide the basis for a picture." Regardless, the start date was creeping up, and even though nine women can't have a baby in one month, nine writers can definitely make a script in one month. Sure, as long as there's enough speed and there sure is. Koch has made claims over the years,

like he worked on the script with the Epstein's for a week. He claims that they didn't want to be on Casa Blanca and that they requested to be transferred to another project because they thought it was going to be a disaster. He says that he was the one left holding the bag and then he got writer's block, and he tried a lot of things to make it work. He thought about opening the movie with Rick and Ilsa falling in love in Paris, but he said that's going to give away too much

about Rick at the beginning. And finally, he decided to just write. He had no storyline, so he just

started writing scenes as they came to me and using the Epstein material wherever it fitted in. He just hoped it wouldn't be so bad that it would end his career. We should be clear, the Epstein's dispute many of his claims, and we will get into the details at the end of the episode. Okay.

“I think author Algin Harmez can provide some insight here. For years Howard Koch took too much”

credit for Casa Blanca, now he takes too little. He reorganized the Epstein's April 2st script to greater dramatic effect. For example, there's more excitement and tension in his version and the final film when Ugarte is captured before Rick and the Gestapo agent meet. And the Norwegian Resistance fighter is used to impart vital information to Lazlo and Koch solves the plays unworkable subplot by having Rick allow the young Bulgarian couples to win at Relip. That was

a really wonky subplot that extends all the way to the end of the film and they are put on the plane with Lazlo and Elsa. It feels really weird like your attention is split between those two stories in the play. So he wrapped that up very well. Yeah, that's a lot. He rewrote the Epstein's to give the movie more weight and significance and the Epstein's then rewrote him to erase his

most ponderous symbols into lighten his earnestness. Basically what it sounds like is Koch gave

it the drama and the Epstein's gave it a lot of the humor, broadly speaking. So again, couple of examples of where Koch gave it some extra heft. In the early drafts Rick turns away an Englishman who writes bad checks from the gambling room. In the version we watch Lizzy, he turns away a German and it hints at maybe political motivations, right? Right, tears at the check. Yep, in the scene where another cafe owner tries to hire Sam Koch later added Rick's line.

I don't buy or sell human beings to try to give him somewhat of a moral line. And his backstory was rewritten. So Lizzy here, we get to he had a wife and children. Now he was a politically active person in his past. Gun running, fighting for the loyalists. That part does not make sense. And that's the one part of this that I wish they hadn't done. I understand that they're trying to like make him more likable, but it's actually a more interesting story if he's just kind of a piece of shit

for his whole life who finally makes the decision to do the right thing in this moment at the end.

Yep, for me it works because I put more weight on the relationship with Louis Reynolds, and I feel like it serves that relationship. That's true, I guess. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We're like, oh, I can buy that, Rick used to do this, but I completely agree with you that it does not feel consistent with the Paris flashbacks. I like that neither of them

“used to do it. They're both kind of pieces of shit. And at the last second, they're like, you know what?”

We're going to do the right thing. And then they do. Well Koch said that he wanted to send her the movie on the relationship between Reynolds and Rick, not Elsa and Rick. So it is interesting. General consensus, Epstein's rework the dialogue, comedy, Reynolds character, Koch, political elements, stressors, Sam, Rick's background, and then Kirties and Wallace are combining all of these scripts and they are running out of time. So Wallace can't push the

May 25th start or he's going to lose Bogart to Sahara. Also, if Bergman's date slip, David Selson is going to be up his ass, ASAP. Plus, Conrad Vite and Dually Wilson have other movies that they're committed to at Warner Brothers. So they are locked in. May 6th, we are 19 days out from shooting. Wallace says to Kirties, we're supposed to be getting Epstein's version of the second act tomorrow morning. Let's meet and discuss by 11 am to provide guidance on the third act. May 11th, we are

14 days out from shooting. Wallace sends a memo to Koch, who's now revising that second act. The memo just says, "Please hurry up." God. So Koch said that he did not love the Epstein material and suggested just use the Epstein's, but Wallace just kept using everybody. In fact, according to one source, writer Lenore Coffee, the only female contributor to the script also wrote for a week or so, including a six-page suggested storyline involving one of Strasser's men killing

Lois. It was not used, but that would have been a very different movie. Wow, yeah. Production looms, Wallace gets cold feet about the love story again, and he calls back in Casey Robinson. He sends in the script. Five days before cameras are rolling, Robinson writes back.

the humor excellent, but the love story deficient. So five days before, another writer of

“Casey Robinson gets brought back on. He's focusing on the love story, and some sources claim”

that it was around this time that he rewrote the final version of the Paris flashback sequence. Chris is least favorite part of the entire movie. And Howard Koch agrees with me, Howard Koch wanted to cut it. They said, "While they illustrated the cause of Rick's bitterness and cynicism, I felt these were sufficiently exposed in the cafe scene with Elsa." I agree. I don't think you need it at all. I agree. All right. Well, we fixed Casa Blanca.

Let's get it cut out. Take that Ben Magnabets production begins on May 25, 1942. They're working off of what would be called the third draft. It was not the third draft, and it was far from the final draft of the script. Also, just to be clear, though,

having a hundred million writers on a movie at this time was actually super common.

Totally common. I think what was a little uncommon was how tight it was in terms of getting into the production, but having this many writers was very normal. So, according to one source, all of the characters except Elsa Lund had been shaped and polished, which I completely buy, and Bergman seems to back up a little bit. It's also reported that the movie was shot in sequence due to an incomplete script. But this is not true. A production reports show that they started with

the Paris flashback, which I think that actually makes sense because you would want to allow Bogart to accomplish that character first, and then transition into a very different performance for the rest of the movie. Sure. It's also nice. That's their first meeting to have that actually be their first meeting. It makes sense. So, you know what's interesting? I think that Bogart had a really hard time settling into that version of the character. He said that he didn't know what he was

doing in the first days on Cost Blanca. Well, it's very unnatural for his, like, it's not a good fit

for Humphrey Bogart in that section. Yes. I think he had a much easier time later on in the script.

“Yeah, he said crumpy drunk. That's what he does. That's what he does best. He's a grump. He's a grump”

drunk. My favorite grump drunk. Almost everything was shot at Warner Brothers. Soundstage backlot. Also, the Metropolitan Airport in Van Nies. Apparently, according to Bergman, there was just constant arguing, constant changes. From the very start, how Wallace was arguing with the Epstein brothers and every lunchtime Mike Curtis argued with how Wallace and then I'm adding this yelled at somebody for eating lunch. Yeah. Every day, they were handing out the

dialogue and we were trying to make some sense of it. No one knew where the picture was going and no one knew where it was going to end, which didn't help us with any of our characterizations. Every morning, we said, well, who are we? What are we doing here? And Michael Kirties would say, "We're not quite sure, but let's get through this scene today and we'll let you know tomorrow." Cool. She wasn't alone. After the first day, Wallace wrote, "We've had a very poor day for

our first days work on Casablanca." And they did, because the overhead lights made a loud hissing sound that was so loud that all the film from that day was unusable. Oh God. The lighting was an ongoing

“issue for other reasons. For the first two weeks or so, Wallace and cinematographer Arthur Edison”

but it had so badly that Edison would cry. And I have a memo here where Wallace basically choose him out for taking so long and a simple setup. And he just literally says, "I must ask you to sacrifice a little on quality. If necessary, in order to not take these long periods of times, four setups." And some of said that Edison was actually a little overly sensitive and that Wallace's criticism was valid because he wanted him to make the movie darker and more shadowy.

His style would work well for close-ups, they said, "But for the wide shots, it looked like it was a set." And I also think to your point, Lizzie, he wanted to make sure they were shooting

Bogart in a way that worked for Bogart. That's the thing is he has never looked better than in

Casablanca. And I do think it's because he's not rightly list. John Houston once said, "Boggy was a medium-sized man, not particularly impressive off-screen, but something happened when he was playing the right part." Yeah. Those lights and shadows composed themselves into another no-blur personality. Very true. Bergman was struggling. It wasn't just the unfinished script. It was that she'd fallen right back to where I'd come from. David O. Selznik liked it because

that last I was going to wear lovely gowns and clothes and look pretty. She didn't like that she was just an object of desire to be looked at in this movie. Fair. Interestingly enough, Wallace had actually avoided showing Selznik her costume tests, and then a couple days into the shoot, Selznik sees them and he sends this angry memo to Wallace, where he says, "The hats are ugly. The evening dress with a striped skirt and sheer blouse makes her butt look big." And she

shouldn't wear white shoes because they make her feet look simply titanic. Anyway, most of the costumes were reworked by Wallace anyway because he felt they were too extravagant for the story. And in the play, she's very extravagantly dressed and in the movie she looks more like she's on safari, which is more appropriate for Morocco. I just love that David O. Selznik is like, "A fate a big. Don't let him see our big fate." "Don't let us see those big,

I will slip us that she's walking around in." "Who cares?" "I don't like one of the most beautiful women in the world." "Well, don't pan down, do you see those goddamn foot mulls?" "You know what I was canose?" "Yeah." Well, Bergman, feticide, felt like she was being typed cast. She said, "I came from Sweden, we're acting meant the certainty of change. You played old people, young people, nasty people, good people, but you rarely played what you looked like or what you were.

paid to see Gary Cooper being Gary Cooper." "Not the hunchback of Notre Dame? From now on,

“you should simply be Ingrid Bergman. To the same thing, play the same sort of role all the time.”

And you develop this one attractive side that the audience will love. Bergman later said, "I knew the things a close-up can do, sometimes invent things that are not there at all." In Casa Blanca, there was often nothing on my face, nothing at all. But the audience put into my face what they thought I was giving. They were inventing my thoughts the way they wanted them. They were doing the acting for me." "I don't sound like what I did when I'm watching it."

"I think that's so interesting." Now, I think one thing that was not helping was that Bergman also didn't really know Humphrey Bogart and had a hard time getting to know him on set. In fact, she said that she got to know him better through watching the Maltese Falcon, which was in theaters when they were shooting Casa Blanca. "From what we know about him from the African Queen, too, it's not that he's unfriendly. It's just this little reserved." "Yeah, he's a little

reserved. I don't think he's buddying up to really anybody on set." "I agree."

"That's not uncommon for him." "Yeah. So, for the first three weeks of shooting,

the writers be writing. Robinson is editing and rearranging the order of scenes involving the love triangle, and one of his suggestions was that Elsa should come first to Rick's cafe alone without loss, though, because he felt that the love story suspense and the melodrama suspense are all mixed up in a hodgepodge." "No, I like that." "Yeah, I don't think this was a solution." "I'm Teresa and my experiences with all entrepreneurs started a shopping trip."

"I know the shopping trip is already the first day." "And the platform makes me no problem." "I have many problems, but the platform is not one of them." "I have the feeling that shopping trip is platform can only be obtained." "All is super easy, integrally and easy." "And the time and the money that I can't afford to waste there is no other way." "For all him in VaxTomb." "Yes, the cost of those tests, I'll shop if I point to the E."

"And then they had a new, unwelcome contributor, Lizzy." "Let's welcome Joseph Breen, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and the Hayes Code." "Oh, great." "He was a journalist and influential castlick. He'd been appointed by Will Hayes as the head of the Production Code Administration in the 1930s. He was also a noted anti-Semite. And yet times worked with George Gisling, the Nazi representative in Hollywood." "Cool, glad there was one of those."

"Yeah, in July 1939, Popeyes 11th denounced anti-Semitism and Breen did issue a statement against anti-Semitism, but he had other problems with Casablanca. He said that the character of Renalt and the relationship between Elsa and Rick were unacceptably successive." "What? What about Renalt was sexually suggestive?" "Then he's trying to get sex out of a Nina for the passport for her husband." "Right, okay." "And this scam that, you know, he would target and coarse women

in Casablanca to have sex with him and exchange for transit is hinted at throughout the movie and certainly in the script." "Even though Renalt is again very clearly in love with Rick." "For his part, Julius Epstein was later asked, "Did you really mean to leave the impression with viewers that Rick and Elsa made love before developing their strategy to leave Casablanca? And he said, "Of course we did. If we had the freedom we have today, we would have made it so

clear, you would have heard the bed squeaking on the soundtrack." "Yeah." "So, yes, Joseph Breenernaut, that was the implication." "It's pretty clear." "Yeah." "Now, specific lines were tweaked or cut, and it does seem like one of the MPPDA's meddling notes resulted in a change that some of our get improved the story. They could not have proved the suggestion that Elsa, a married woman, had an affair with Rick and Paris, so the compromise is what you liked, Lizzy. Elsa thought

“her husband was dead." "I do like it. I mean, here's the thing, it changes the whole story,”

it changes her story big time, but I think that that's kind of an important point." "I agree." "He made it make the love story between her and Victor, not between her and Rick, but continue." "I completely agree with you. I do think the more compelling love story by a mile is her and Victor. I love the scene where he kind of gives her permission to tell him that she was with somebody else. I thought that was a wonderfully written heartbreaking scene. I love that

they never make his character stoop in any ways to try to make Rick more appealing by comparison.

"No." "They let Victor be great the whole time." "Yeah, I love that." "And he also, I love the scene where, you know, he's basically trying to get her to go without him, and she says like, "Would you really have left me?" and he's like, "Yes, and you know the answer is no, and she does too." And I just I think that that scene is so beautiful, and they to me have better chemistry on it. "They way better chemistry. 100%. Yes. Humphrey Bogart has great chemistry

“with Reanol, in my opinion. Like that's why to me, that's your hand or work. So much better.”

All right, a couple of other things. They also insisted that Rick could only shoot Strasher if it was in self-defense, so Strasher has to pull a gun on Rick first. And then there were other people weighing into. Warner Bros. had a foreign publicity wanted to avoid offending specific countries. So the pick pocket in regards to it needed to be Italian, not Spanish,

shout out Peter Laurie. It was great in this movie. Always great. The king of the black market

everyone Italian. Anybody who is vaguely bad is going to be Italian. And basically they cut

“any references to Islam in the script. Okay. They just cut anything there. So Robinson was”

gone by early June, caught just taking off the project shortly after a week after that the Epstein's are out, and there's a June first dated scripts that some sources or one source claims that's where here's good luck to you is replaced with here's looking at you kid. Now, other sources claim that line doesn't appear in any of the mammary graph scripts, only the cutterscript, and was likely thought up in July. But according to the unit publicist notes, Bergman would play

poker when things were slow on set. With her hairdresser and English teacher, using hairpins his chips, and it was Humphrey Bogart, who taught her the slang phrase, "Here's looking at you, while she played." And that's the story I choose to believe. Yeah. So by June fifth, this is only two weeks into shooting. They're delayed because they don't have a script. But good news, on June 24th, the final version of the script is sent out. Bad news, Jack Warner thinks it sucks.

So the Epstein's get called back in. This is also when Super Handsome superstar Paul Henry joins the shoot. He'd just been finishing up now Voyager. According to Wallace, he then immediately got sick,

and then decided he didn't want to do the part. Henry's daughter Monica later said that basically

Now Voyager, where he's opposite Betty Davis, and he very famously lights two cigarettes in his mouth at one point and gives her one and it's a very romantic moment. They did transform Tim into a romantic lead, and he worried that audiences were going to root for Bogart over him, and it would undo what he'd just accomplished in his last movie. And I just want to do a quick background because it's so cool and how it ties into this movie, Lizzy. So Paul Henry, I will say right now, it seems like

just as cool as he is hot. So his father converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the early 1900s, due to anti-Semitism in Austria-Hungry. And then Paul Henry was discovered by Otto Präminger. He performed in stage productions, applied for membership in the Nazi-run National Socialistic Reich film chamber, but was rejected because his father had been born a Jew. And then he started to become fervently anti-Nazi. He even started an anti-Nazi play in Great Britain, the madman of

Europe. He helped to Jewish comedian friend escape from Berlin, and according to the L.A. Times, for that and other anti-Nazi actions, and Reed was designated official enemy of the third right. Hell yeah, and all of his assets were seized. So Henry didn't his wife, and by this point he'd acted in a few movies, both back in his home country, but also in Great Britain, moved to the United States in 1940 with 20 British pounds to their names, so they had to start over

completely. So I would imagine he might feel like Casa Blanca's a step back after working really hard to get now Voyager. Sure. Wallace said he felt the role of an underground leader who appeared in a white tropical suit, and a hat in a famous nightclub and talked openly with Nazis was ridiculous, and rental in a musical comedy. I promised to build up his part and Casey Robinson handled this. Henry joined the cast. And I do think in the finished film,

he comes off. It's an interesting character who has performed incredibly well.

“I agree. He's honestly, I think, my favorite performance in this movie.”

Him and Cloud reigns. I love Cloud reigns in this movie. Yeah. But it's hot, Lizzy, and on July 1st, they bring the Epstein's back in and coach because they have no idea how to end the movie. And his coach later said every day that we're here where we don't know how to end this is costing the studio $30,000. So it's often reported that Wallace Curtis and the writers were struggling with whether or not Ilsa should choose Rick or Victor.

And Bergman has said that they were going to shoot two endings. So the first ending, she would say goodbye to Bogart and fly off with Henry, and then they'd walk off. And everybody would say, you know, it's a beautiful friendship. But then they were going to do another ending where she was going to stay according to Bergman. Hell, no. You're getting on that plane. Or she was going to leave with Rick. So some authors in film historians say that that was probably

never considered because the MPPDA would never approve a married woman leaving her husband for an

unmarried man. In the original play, Ilsa says she wants to stay with Rick, but ultimately leaves with Victor just like we've discussed. Rick pulls a gun on Strasser, ultimately does not shoot and gets arrested. So it seems like the real issue was how do we show Ilsa leaving? How much should Rick push? How easily should Ilsa give in? How should the scene end? Like how do you make that calculus all work? And they considered a bunch of ideas. Strasser and Rick get shot.

Only Rick gets shot. Victor gets shot. Strasser never shows up. Rick and Randall play chess. Ilsa isn't there at all. Rick sends her to the airport alone. It's basically every possible version. All of the early ideas up until the June 1st draft took place at the cafe, not at the airport. Which is such a less cinematic. I love the fog and the approach is saying yeah, it's beautiful. So finally, this side, Strasser shot by Rick. Rick convinces Ilsa to leave by talking about her

“role in Victor's important work and that Rick should shoot Strasser. We'll do that. We don't know who”

came up with that ending. Exactly. Julius Epstein later said Warner had 75 writers under contract

Howard Koch says he did the ending, case he Robinson says he did the ending. Regardless, there are still some loose ends. Like the debate about whether or not Rick and Ilsa should kiss on the runway before they say goodbye. Kurtis said yes. Humphrey Bogart and Wallace said

“absolutely not. And that was the right call. Yes. And that's what they went with.”

End of July 1942, they are behind schedule. Michael Kurtis explodes at a bit player. Bogart Henry and Reigns walked off the set as a result. They lose another day when they realized the real plane that they were supposed to shoot with had a different number of windows than the model plane that had been seen earlier in the scene. There was another delay caused by Kurtis's accent. He kept asking for a poodle, a black poodle. Everyone waited while one of the crew

members went off to find a black poodle. When he returned with a dog, Kurtis said, I wanted a poodle in the street. A poodle of water, not a goddamn dog. You wanted a puddle. A couple more fun facts. Peter Lori liked to pull pranks on sets like using an eyedropper to put out Kurtis's cigarette. And duly Wilson, as I mentioned, did not play the piano. The real pianist, Elliot Carpenter was actually there on set playing for the sound recording. All right,

the final line Lizzy was dubbed. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, so they had a few weeks to decide and I'll give you four options. And you can tell me which one they should have picked. Option one. Louis, I began to see a reason for your sudden attack of patriotism. While you defend your country, you also protect your investment. Sorry, I fell asleep. That's like that. Lizzy's face was like, what a clunker. Option two,

if you ever die a hero's death, heaven protect the angels. Option three. Louis, I might have known

“you'd mix your patriotism with a little larceny, an option of four. Louis, I think this is the”

beginning of a beautiful friendship. Yeah, well, there's a clear choice and three real speakers in there. And Wallace wrote the one that they went with. That was how Wallace who wrote, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Great ending. So shooting wraps on August third, 1942, 11 days over schedule, $75,000 over budget. But post-production is going to be easy, Lizzy. We got the luxury of time. We're not releasing this movie until the spring of 1943.

And they've got an amazing composer, the father of film music, 24-time Academy Award nominee,

three-time winner, and another Austrian Jewish transplant to the United States, the incredible Max Steiner, who hated the main song as time goes by. He thought it was boring. He was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, and he won three. But they had to keep the song in the movie because it has so many scenes with Bergman saying, play time goes by. Play his time goes by. Yeah, you cannot change that. They thought about it. They thought about reshooting Bergman scenes with a different

song being asked for, but it turns out she'd gotten that dream job after all, Lizzy. She replaced Vera Serena as Maria and for whom the bell tolls. And for that role, she had just cut her hair. So, the song stayed and audiences loved it. On September 22nd of 1942, the movie was screened for the first time. One executive said, "Change the name. The audience is going to think Casa Blanca's a Mexican beer." Is that so bad? Is this a bad? According to Wallace,

the audience seemed to like it, though they didn't rave, and indeed several cards suggested we should show Rick and Louis escaping Casa Blanca as it looked as if they would be arrested when they got back to town. But if you can't do two escapes one after another. No, they had an unexpected fan. Joe Breen and the publicity department loved it. So, uh, Hayes Coads says two thumbs up.

Julie Seppstein did not. He wrote, "When we previewed it for the first time, I thought it was a big

flop. We wrote a note to how Wallace telling him so. Thereafter, he kept that memo in his desk. Whenever we have an argument with him about anything, he would open his desk, take out that memo, and give it to us." So, they got all the time in the world and then on November 8th, 1942, US troops land in North Africa. And all of a sudden, Morocco and North Africa. Casa Blanca are on the minds of Americans and executives at Warner Brothers, specifically Jack Warner think, "Oh my god,

this is a great opportunity for our studio to capitalize on the war." So, they pull the release in, but executives at Warner Brothers go a step further. They say, "Let's add an epilogue to show the allies routing the Nazis in North Africa." And Jack Warner, two as credit, says, "No way! It's impossible to change this picture and make sense with the story we told originally. It's a great picture as it is." Also, Jack Warner knew if they added any scenes, they wouldn't

“be able to release the movie fast enough after the landing at North Africa. Right?”

So, the execs pushed back. They said, "You gotta do it." And Wallace started preparing for the scene, and then there were issues getting a plane ticket for cloud rains. So, they couldn't add any scenes to the end of the movie, which I'm like, "Did they maybe lose the ticket on purpose? Did they give a reverse letters of transit? Did they stick it in the piano?" I don't know. David Salznik saw a preview of the movie on November 11th, and he says, "I loved it.

You never see your feet. Don't change a thing." So Casa Blanca premieres on November 26, 1942.

It released wide, two months later, as we mentioned on January 23, 1943, and again,

between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in Casa Blanca. Casa Blanca. That's right.

Casa Blanca was a hit. It was not a runaway train, but it was a hit. It generated $3.7 million,

putting the studio well in the black. It was a roughly $1 million budget. The New York Times wrote, "In short, we will say that Casa Blanca is one of the years most exciting and trenchant films."

“It certainly won't make Vishie happy, but that's another point for it. I believe it was the”

seventh highest grossing film of the year. Hmm. Many who worked on it still couldn't see it for what it was. Howard Coch later said, "In January of 1943, when the picture opened at Warner's Hollywood theater, I wondered what all the excitement was about. I was still blind to the virtues of the film, and saw only what I considered its faults. When a year later, it received the Academy Award, I was by that time, in year to miracles." So Lizzy, this movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

Any guesses as to what it was nominated for aside from best picture? Is it best actor for Humphrey Bogart? Yep. His first nomination? Best actress for Ingrid Bergman? No, cloud rains. Best actor in a supporting role. He was nominated. He did not win. I don't know. They have costume and photography. Are they're Edison? So the crying was worth it. Best editing, Owen Marx. Great. And Max Steiner, best music, despite having to include a song that he really, really, really didn't

like. Perfect. It won for director Michael Cortes. It won for screenplay. The App Steins and Howard Coch.

And a hundred million other people. Yes. And it won for best picture. How Wallace, who is also

receiving the Irving Thalberg Award that year for his position as head of production at Warner Brothers, stood to accept the award for best picture when Jack Warner ran to the stage ahead of him and took the award. Wow. Wallace was stunned. Quote. Casa Blanca had been my creation. Jack had absolutely nothing to do with it. As the audience gasped, I tried to get out of the row seats and into the aisle, but the entire Warner family sat blocking me. I had no alternative, but to sit down again,

humiliated and furious. Whoa. Now apparently this was pretty common at the time. Studio heads would often collect the trophy for best picture. But it seems like Wallace expected this was my first, you know, big producing effort. Yeah. I was the man behind this. I'm getting the Irving Thalberg Award. Apparently there was some press about a supposed rift between the two of them that was published the next day. And Warner Brothers pressured him into sending in a letter saying, there's no problem.

We all expected Jack to go collect the award. Everything's fine. And then he nursed a grudge until he died. Yeah. So this was apparently, it was a pretty big blow. Cortes reportedly told his friends that Wallace was the only one who had faith in Casablanca that Warner thought the movie was going to be a disaster. But what's really interesting and kind of tragic is that Wallace was a lot more like Jack Warner than maybe he realized. So back at Warner Brothers, Irene Lee, who is credited

by many as discovering this property, asked for a raise. "How always took total credit for discovering

Casablanca?" He barely mentioned me in his autobiography. When Casablanca came out and was that tremendous hit and I had bought it for so little money. I spoke to Hal and said, "Don't you think I

“ought to have a bonus?" And he said, "That's what you're here for." Wow. I was in a meeting one”

day and I said that I would like to be a producer and you would have thought I should be taken out and shot." And quote. Casablanca's popularity grew over time, annual screenings at universities, film houses, a lot of showings on television. And in fact in 1977, Lizzie, it was reportedly the most frequently shown movie on television that year. Julie Seppstein has said, "He just didn't understand it." At the time, every studio made a picture a week. An assembly line. This was just

one of the pictures at Warner Brothers. It was an assembly line. It really became a quote classic when Bogart died in 1955. It's possible he did die young, you know, shortly after the African Queen. There were a couple of TV series built off the film, one in the 50s, one in the 80s, but the lingering legacy of the film has been credit over the screenplay. Again, in 1973, caught downplayed the contributions of the original playwrights. He wrote, "The play provided an

exotic locale, a character named Rick, who ran a cafe, but little in the way of an adaptable story to the screen." I strongly disagree with this characterization. Yeah, that doesn't sound right.

“Having just read the play, I think the writers on the film did marvelous work in adapting”

something that was very clearly a play. But to suggest that there was little there, yeah, does not feel accurate to me. Murray Burnett sued Koch and New York magazine for libel. He lost. He sued Warner Brothers for the rights to his characters, and he lost again. In 1985, Howard Koch apologized, but not to Murray Burnett. He apologized to Julius Epstein for the other claims he'd made in his book that they'd collaborated in person, and that the Epstein

said requested to be taken off the movie. In 1989, Kossoblokke was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry. It was one of the first batch of 25 movies that was added to the registry and the first year of its existence. In 1991, Koch had 89 years old, wrote to the LA Times. Having read the play more recently, I believe that the complaint, meaning Burnett's complaint, was at least to some extent justified. After 50 years,

That same year, the play was finally staged, it's called Rick's bar, Kossoblokke, because Warner Brothers wouldn't let him use the title, Kossoblokke. And by that point, Joan Allison and Murray Burnett had fallen out and hadn't seen each other in years.

“Joan Allison in 1989 said, Murray's concept of sophisticated was me, and I think she means lowest.”

Lois was based on me and he should see me now. I'm in the process of dying. Maybe this week, maybe next. The thing that sustains me a great deal is the jeopardy show when I can yell out more answers than the contestants. She died in 1992, within a few days of actor Paul Henryd. Ten years earlier, in a 1982 article for film comment, writer Chuck Ross retypped the screen play, and changed the title back to everybody comes to Rick's. He then submitted it to 217 agencies.

38 rejected it. 33 recognized the story. Eight said that it sounded suspiciously like Kossoblokke, three said they could sell it, and one suggested that he turned it into a novel. Wow. And that is the story of Kossoblokke. Oh wow, that was great. I love that the script readers. So Lizzy, I have to ask you what went right. Oh gosh, I think what went right for me is our heroic story editor, Irene Lee, who was able to pick up the material, recognize what it could be,

and stood by it when so many others passed. And it's especially disheartening here that it seems

like she never got her credit. So I hope she's satisfied with what went right. She deserved much more.

“I think this is a great choice. I really love this movie. And I think you could give it to any of the”

writers. All of the all meets actually such crucial contributions. Jessie and I were talking, my sister, our researcher about the movie. And oh, I love this thing that caught it. And this always clear the Epstein's wrote this line. And it's so funny. The way Kasey Robinson, you know, cracked the romance, or you go back to the original play. And there are full stretches and sequences that are verbatim, as we will later see on screen, that Murray Burnett and Joan Allison clearly

came up with. I think all of that's amazing. And I love Humphrey Bogart and I just did a tear of watching a bunch of his movies. But I like you. I have to give mine to Paul Henryd in this movie, who that character, if played wrong, I think could come off as such a fantasy, who doesn't feel real. I was very moved when the scene between him and Elsa, when he asks about if she was lonely. Like I just thought his performance was amazing in that moment. And I thought it was very well written

scene. It's more complex than what is in the play to be fair. And while I felt, I think Burnett was doing something very in keeping with the style of the time, which was a somewhat bigger like, don't look at me, you know, they mean sort of reaction to him. I liked how small Henryd felt comfortable playing that scene. In an era when it was very easy to go big a lot. He feels very modern, very modern, very modern. I agree. I think Bogart does too, actually, in a lot

of ways, the two of them, for sure. I agree. It's interesting that you mentioned that character potentially coming off poorly, because there's almost a version of this where he could fear into Ashley Wilkes territory from Gone with the Wind, which of course intentionally is written to be kind of a drip, which you realize by the end. But I think that totally in the wrong hands,

this could have gone that direction. He never loses his dignity, but he also shows you the

humanity behind it, too. And I think that's really hard. And he does it with a plum. I agree. So Paul Henryd, I need to watch now, Voyager. I watched a couple of scenes from it, you know, just

“to see it. And it looks interesting. I haven't seen it. The only thing that I will say is”

young Betty Davis is not old Betty Davis. I know. This was her in her women's pictures rather, you know, it was a different Betty Davis. I know. I still, I put it on my list. So yeah. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this brief journey into Casa Blanca. Really, please check out the books we recommended. They are all so wonderful. There's so much about this movie that is out there. Lizzie, if they're enjoying the podcast, how can folks give us a little support?

Well, you could tell a friend or family member that you enjoy it. You can send them an episode. Your favorite episode, perhaps you can leave us a rating review on whatever podcast you are

listening to this on. We always appreciate that. You can, if you want to go a step further,

you can subscribe on Apple or in Spotify. And if you do that, you will get one extra bonus episode a month or you can go even one step further and you can become a patron on Patreon for just $5 a month. You too will get at least one bonus episode every single month as well as an ad free feed and more. And then if you really want to go the extra mile, you can get a shout out for $50 just like these extra special kid patrons here. Lizzie's Sean Connery impression is

so good. And my home free program impression is so bad that I decided to write a song for this outro instead of do the bugger at impression. So I hope you enjoy a little tune called

. Adrian Pan-Korea, Anteline Renee Cook, Ben Shindleman, Blaze Ambrose,

“Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, Sea Grace Bee, Chris Leel, Chris Saka,”

David Friscollante, Darren and Dale Conkling, Dawn Shival, Ellen Singleton, M. Zodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G, Filment Yourself, Frankenstein, Gailon and Miguel, the broken glass kids.

Grace Potter, Half-Rae Hound, James McAvoy, Jared Ugg, Jason Frankle, J. J. Rabido,

Jury Hill Piper, Jose Emilano Salto Del Jojo, Karina Kanaba, Kate Elrington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Olga Schlager McOye, Lazy Freda, Lena LJ, Lydia House, Mark Bertha, Mary Poses Humans, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, Nathan Centeno, Rose Mary Southward,

Ruralger, Sadie, Just Sadie, Scado Shida, Selman Chinani, Steve Winterbauer, Susanne Johnson,

The Provost Family, and there is no spoon. Thanks so much for listening, guys. Please tune in this Friday on our subscription feeds for our fourth conversation in the best picture race where we're talking all things international. That's right. Casa Blanca has teed us up perfectly to talk about the two international

“submissions into the best picture race sentimental value and the secret agent. We're very”

excited to talk about those two movies and then next week we are continuing with our Oscars coverage with Lizzie's favorite movie of all time Forest Gump. We are so excited for Lizzie to tell you all about how that movie just keeps her going. She just can't stop running after she watches you. You might be surprised by how much I enjoyed Forest Gump on this viewing.

“I think Forest Gump is a blast, so I'm excited to talk about it. Don't think just enjoy it.”

All right, we will see you next time. Bye. To support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an at-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website whatwinwrongpod.com for more info. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer, post-production in music by David Bowman.

This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by Karen Krebsaw.