Casablanca: How an unproduced play marched into movie history

I once saw Casablanca with a friend who hadn’t seen it, and she said, “Wow. This movie jam packed with cliches. It’s off putting. Wait. This is the source of all the cliches isn’t it?”

Which it is. One of the most quotable movies of all time. If memes were a thing in 1942, it would have been the king. Still quotable today.

I did not know this back story. The script was so good it called into question for me was why it was ever rejected for the stage. Movies has been repurposed for Broadway.

So I did a little searching and found in the nineties it was in the planning stages. The play ran on London's West End for only six short weeks and the Broadway producers abandoned the idea. Maybe the couple did not realize they were not writing a play but a movie script instead?

I have probably watched this movie a dozen times, and I delight in all the tiny, barely-acknowledged references throughout.

The Italian and French soldiers walking into the bar, and the Italian not able to get a word in edgewise.

The German couple saying, "Leibchen, what watch is it?" "Six watch" "Such watch" because that is the literal translation into English of the German "uhr".

The singing of "La Marseillaise" by extras who were mostly themselves refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe -- the emotion was real.

I've heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs. "Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid," it always began. (Rick is calling Ilsa a whore.)

Every scene is a gem.

A Moroccan city founded by Spanish traders following Portuguese colonists, then part of a French colony which is controlled by the Germans until freed by the Americans and becoming the icon of an American movie...

There are SO many reasons why Casablanca should just have been a studio film that went through multiple directors with a bunch of unplanned casting decisions forced by existing contracts.

But, of course, it didn't end up that way.

The Italian author Umberto Eco had an interesting explanation on why he likes Casablanca[1] : no other movie was able to pack so many cliches together. It is like a whole cathedral of standard myths.

[1] https://biblioklept.org/2013/05/26/casablanca-or-the-cliches...