Sending ‘Casablanca’ Over the Rainbow
Sam, the piano player, was the first to become aware of it. When he walked through the front door of Rick’s Cafe Americain, the floor--once dark gray, now blazing red--virtually leaped up and smacked him in the eyes.
“Boss! Boss!” Sam yelled, as he scurried up the once light-gray, now yellow-tan stairs toward Rick’s apartment. “Boss, come out here. Something crazy’s going on.”
“What is it, Sam?” Rick said, as he stepped out of the gray-brown shadows of his upstairs office, bluish smoke rising from the cigarette wedged between his pinkish lips.
“Look at the floor, boss. Look at the walls, your clothes. Look. Look,” Sam stammered. “What’s happening?”
Rick held his hand up to shield his eyes from the reflection of Sam’s bright-gold, satin tuxedo. “You planning on playing the piano tonight, Sam, or do you think the suit will be enough entertainment?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Look at me. Gold! When I put this thing on this morning, it was gray, like most everything else.”
Rick studied his own jacket. The blazer was still white, but there was something more, a hint of . . . lavender?
“What the . . . .”
“You won’t believe this, boss,” said Sasha, the Russian bartender, who came charging over from the bar. “The brandy has turned brown and the champagne is yellow. Look at this, the blue curacao is blue !”
“So is my bar,” said the ample Senor Ferrari, who dropped in from the Blue Parrot down the street. “You should see the marketplace. The pottery looks like fruit. The fruit stands look like gum-ball machines. Casablanca is on fire with color.”
Sasha couldn’t stifle a laugh.
“Pardon me for laughing, Senor Ferrari,” he said, his eyes scanning the fat man’s yellow suit, black cummerbund and aqua-blue tie. “But you look like a circus poster.”
“I’m afraid the same observation may be made about me,” said Victor Laszlo, who quietly followed Ferrari into the cafe, wearing almost identical shades of yellow and blue. “I apologize for my appearance, but I am afraid I cannot explain it.”
“Everybody sit down,” Rick said, calmly but firmly. “Sasha, pour us some drinks. I think I can explain what’s happened here.”
“I have 20,000 francs that says that not even you can sort this out, Rick,” said Capt. Louie Renault, the local police prefect who arrived with Maj. Strasser, of the Third Reich, and a mismatched retinue of Moroccan police and German soldiers.
“Yes, Mr. Blaine, please inform us,” said Maj. Strasser, with that rigid tone of superiority. “The views of blundering Americans always amuse me.”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Rick said, mashing a cigarette against the oxblood floor. “Red tile. Goofy bright ties. Sam’s gold suit. Gentlemen, we’ve been colorized.”
“Colorized!!!?,” they gasped in unison.
“Who did it, boss, the Germans?” Sasha said, glaring at Maj. Strasser.
“No, this is one atrocity we can’t blame on the Nazis,” Rick said.
“I’ll round up the usual suspects,” said Louie.
“Never mind, I know who did it,” Rick said, with a look of disgust that would shame a rat. “Fellow named Ted Turner.”
“I swear I’ve never met anyone named Ted Turner,” said Laszlo’s wife, Ilsa Lund, as she emerged from Rick’s apartment, straightening the blue dress she wore when she and Rick parted in Paris. “Rick, you have to believe me, my darling, my darling . . . Oh, hello, Victor. The Resistance meeting broke up early? Did I say Rick? Of course, I meant to say, ‘Victor, you have to believe me, my darling, my. . . .”
“Drop it, Ilsa, we’ve got more important things to worry about right now than your fidelity,” Rick said. “And you can ditch the blue dress. We won’t be doing the flashback scene for a while.”
“Who is this Ted Turner?,” asked Maj. Strasser, turning to Laszlo. “One of your operatives?”
“Not one of ours,” Laszlo said. “I believe he is an American.”
“American as apple pie,” Rick said. “He’s a big shot back home. He’s got more money than he knows what to do with, so he bought up a bunch of old black-and-white movies and is having them colorized so he can make even more money. I read about it in the trades.”
“The trades? Which one, the one with the green stripes?,” said Louies. “You’ve been holding out on me again, Rick.”
“You call this color?” Ilsa said, staring at herself in a hand mirror. “My face is pale orange, or is it pink? My finger looks like a flesh-colored crayon.”
“I am very distressed by the fact that we are all the same color,” said Maj. Strasser.
Suddenly, everyone was looking at Sam.
“I don’t know what this color is,” Sam said, turning his hand in front of him. “But it definitely isn’t pink.”
“It’s dark mauve, I think,” said Ilsa.
“It’s the same color as Rick’s hair,” Louie added. “And my mustache.”
“Look, Sam is the same color as our bourbon,” said Sasha, holding up a glass of the computer-tinted stage booze.
“Welcome to modern technology,” Rick said, sarcastically. “We’ve got lots of matches. Sam’s gold jacket is the same color as these Letters of Transit. Victor and Ferrari’s suits are the same faded canary yellow as the dress that dame with the diamonds was wearing in the opening scene. Look at my blazer. It’s the same color as my cigarette smoke.”
Maj. Strasser stood and strode stiffly out of the room: “I don’t know about the rest of you pumpkin heads,” he said, “but I cannot take this story seriously any longer. I am a Nazi not a bonbon.”
“He’s right,” said Louie. “Did you see the globe that was used in the opening to show audiences where Casablanca is? It looked like the USA Today weather map.”
“I too am leaving,” said Senor Ferrari, flicking at his electric-blue tie as if it were a stubborn moth. “As unscrupulous as I am in matters of commerce, I will not work in a painted version of ‘Casablanca.’ ”
Ilsa then took Victor by the arm and motioned toward the door.
“I’m sorry, Rick, but we have to be going,” she said. “I was looking forward to hearing you say, ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ but without the flashback. . . .”
“We’ll always have Paris, that’s rich,” Rick said. “The line should be, ‘We’ll always have puce.’ Anyway, Ilsa, go. If you don’t go now, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. . . .”
“Goodby, Mr. Blaine,” Victor said, interrupting Rick’s speech. “We have a plane to catch. I hear it’s silver with blue engines. That ought to be a thrilling sight in the fog.”
“Go on, then, get out, all of you,” Rick said, angrily. “I don’t care if I see any of your flesh-colored faces again.”
Sam began plinking on the piano as Rick loosened his tie and poured himself another tumbler of brown liquid. Sam started playing “As Time Goes By,” caught himself, then changed the tune to “Over the Rainbow.”
Rick, almost in tears, suddenly slammed his fist on the table.
“Of all the black-and-white gin joints in all the black-and-white movies in all the world,” he said, “why did he have to colorize mine?”
(The colorized version of “Casablanca” airs on Ted Turner’s Superstation at 5:05 p.m. Wednesday and again at 7:35 p.m. Nov. 21. The color is by San Diego-based American Film Technologies.)
