An unlikely success story
CASABLANCA’S START WAS SO ROCKY, ITS STUDIO AND STARS NEVER EXPECTED IT TO BECOME A HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC
Filming was not off to a great start on the movie set at Hollywood’s Warner Bros. Studio in May 1942. The script was only half-completed, the leading lady didn’t know how to play her part and the male star was hesitant because he had never been in a romantic role.
So how did Casablanca become the iconic film it is today, reportedly the mostwatched movie in the world and almost certainly the most quoted — “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “Round up the usual suspects,” “We’ll always have Paris” — in history?
Somehow all the pieces managed to fall into place. Casablanca was popular at the box office, received positive press from critics and even snagged three Academy Awards, including outstanding motion picture (known since 1962 as best picture).
“The stars were all in alignment,” said film historian Noah Isenberg, author of We’ll Always Have Casablanca. “It was a miracle.”
Eight decades later, as Casablanca marks its 80th anniversary, a film whose stars and studio saw little chance of major success continues to captivate audiences like few others.
The film’s A-list cast includes Humphrey Bogart as cynical Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as his doe-eyed former lover, Ilsa Lund, and Paul Henreid as her patriotic but stodgy husband, Victor Laszlo. Their love triangle — scandalous for Hollywood at the time — fuels the tension of the movie as a succession of desperate refugees visit Rick’s Café Américain in Morocco while trying to escape the viciousness of Nazi-occupied Europe.
This epic tale of love, betrayal and sacrifice against the backdrop of the Second World War captured the public’s attention to a degree that surprised the people who created it.
“None of them foresaw that the film would be so well-received,” Isenberg said. “Director Michael Curtiz didn’t even have an acceptance speech ready when he won best director at the Oscars.”
Indeed, it was a wonder, especially given how the production had started. With the script still being written, Bergman fretted about how to portray Ilsa. Did she love Rick or Laszlo? Bergman said she didn’t know.
Bogart was equally uncertain because he had never played a romantic lead. He had made his mark as a tough guy in Petrified Forest, High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, now considered a film noir classic.
“Bogart was not that into the character,” said Ben Mankiewicz, a film critic and Turner Classic Movies host. “Bogart and Bergman had no chemistry at first. How do we get the greatest love story Hollywood ever told while all this is happening? When you realize this is going on, everything about the movie becomes gripping.”
Casablanca went through several sets of writers. It started as an unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, who created many of the stirring themes that show up in the movie. Then brothers Julius and Philip Epstein worked on the droll dialogue and new story arcs before handing the script over to Howard Koch. Uncredited was Casey Robinson, brought in to punch up the love scenes.
The Epsteins and Koch would share the Oscar for best screenplay. Despite that recognition, Julius Epstein later admitted that the script had “more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there’s nothing better.”
The film might never have been made had studio reader Stephen Karnot not reviewed it when he did: Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, drawing a reluctant United States into the Second World War. Karnot pushed Casablanca forward as a promising movie to pursue. Timing is everything, as they say.
Censorship played a big part in movie production in the heyday of Hollywood. Casablanca went through numerous script changes because of plot devices and dialogue deemed unsuitable to the moral standards of the day. Clever rewrites were needed to keep the plot flowing.
The supporting cast helped the film shine with a personal passion for its plot. At its heart, Casablanca is a movie about refugees played by refugees. Many of the extras had actually escaped Europe to avoid Nazi persecution. Perhaps the most stirring performance by an extra comes from Madeleine Lebeau, who fled Paris with her then-husband, Dalio, ahead of the invading German army in 1940, and who leads a tear-stained rendition of La Marseillaise and shouts of “Vive la France! Vive la démocratie!”
Miraculously, Casablanca became regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. As film critic Andrew Sarris wrote, the movie’s success was the “happiest of happy accidents.” The critic Roger Ebert said that cinematically, Citizen Kane is a much better picture, but Casablanca is “more loved.”
Isenberg echoed that sentiment: “Casablanca, like very few other films, manages to grab hold of us. It speaks to us arguably more than any other film because it traffics so much in archetypes. There are so many, that the Italian novelist and academic Umberto Eco wrote, ‘Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films.’ In other words, it’s not just a movie, it is THE movie.”