As ‘Casablanca’ Goes By

As time and 50 years go by, that now classic movie “Casablanca” keeps coming back, twice reduced to home video, colorized, dubbed and redubbed, transmogrified by ABC and CBS into two unsuccessful television series and now heading back to big-screen theaters (April 10 at Mann’s Chinese and April 17 at the Ken in San Diego), scrubbed and cleaned up again by the cinematic recyclers of Turner Entertainment.

Somehow they keep finding ways to play it again . . . and again . . . and again. This time new 35mm prints made in turn from a new negative that was made from the original nitrate fine-grain master.

No matter what is done to “Casablanca,” its tough-guy lines and sentimental speeches alone remain untouched and unedited, having more quotable lines per page than any other movie.

And often the most misquoted.

There is, for example, the frequently growled but incorrectly snarled, “Play it again, Sam.”

The two surviving credited writers for the movie, Julius Epstein and Howard Koch, still at work writing scripts in their 80s--Epstein in Los Angeles, Koch in Woodstock, N.Y.--can recall the lines, but they back off saying who wrote what.

For the record, Humphrey Bogart as the American cafe and casino owner Rick Blaine never said, “Play it again, Sam.” Nor did Ilsa Laszlo, Ingrid Bergman. What Ilsa did say to the piano player, Sam, played by Dooley Wilson, was this series of lines:

“Some of the old songs, Sam.”

“Play it once, Sam, for old time’s sake. . . .”

“Play it, Sam.”

“Play ‘As Time Goes By.’ ”

He begins to play and Ilsa says, “Sing it, Sam.”

Nobody gets it right.

Writer-producer Chuck Workman who specializes in documentaries about American films is currently shooting “The First 100 Years,” a centennial salute to the movies that will be released next year. He recently took a crew to the “Rick’s Cafe” McDonald’s on Vine Street in Hollywood to ask what he calls “ordinary people” to recall the Ilsa-Sam scene. (For the record, in the movie it’s Rick’s Cafe Americain .)

“Nobody got it right,” he says. “We asked them to tell us what was said, what the scene was about. They all misquoted the lines. Some tried to fake it. Some thought it was the words to a song. In our movie we’ll intercut these scenes with scenes from the movie.

“The movie is always being misquoted. But it probably remains one of the best written movies.”

I stick my neck out for no one.

Are my eyes really brown?

We all try. You succeed.

The Germans wore gray. You wore blue.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Is that cannon fire or my heart pounding?

Round up the usual suspects.

Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The movie’s three writers--Julius’ twin brother Philip died in 1952--shared one of the three Oscars “Casablanca” won in 1943. The credit is about the only thing they share.

Both writers in looking back 50 years remember it as just another writing assignment. One of 50 he did, Julius Epstein says. An ordinary assignment, Koch says. It was a time when studios like Warner Bros., where “Casablanca” was produced by Hal B. Wallis and directed by Michael Curtiz, released a feature movie a week. Writers moved in and out of their assignments. Most worked on a contract basis with the studio. Collaboration was a way of life. No one knew of million-dollar spec scripts.

Strange that this movie, often taught as the classic example of film writing, has no certain lineage. What seems to be certain is that the movie is a tribute to the writers’ work. Director Curtiz, a Hungarian, had trouble with American idioms and probably contributed little to the movie’s spoken literature. Stars then performed what was written, rarely contributing their own lines.

Epstein remembers that he and his brother were assigned the script, based on the unproduced play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” by Murray Burnett and Joan Allison. But before they could finish it World War II started and they were called away by director Frank Capra to work on a short-term Army project.

Koch remembers having the script of the two Epsteins turned over to him for finishing, but because Bergman had a definite stop date at Warners, shooting began without a completed script, its ending uncertain.

Both writers remember--once the Epsteins returned from their Army assignment--script pages being written the night before or the morning of a scene and walked onto the set and to the waiting director and actors.

Epstein today claims dominant authorship, however, saying that the payroll records of Warner Bros. show that he and his brother were paid $32,500 for their work on “Casablanca,” while Koch earned $4,700.

Koch says his special contribution to the film reflected his political, anti-fascist feelings of the time. The Epsteins, he believes, wrote the more romantic lines. It is likely that Koch’s thoughts came in such lines from “Casablanca” as, “I bet they’re all asleep in America,” a reference to pre-World War II isolationist feelings in the United States, and “the Germans have outlawed miracles,” a reference to Hitlerian anti-clerical thought.

Koch later was barred from Hollywood for his alleged political activity, becoming, as he says, one of “the Hollywood 19” and having to leave the country for work in Europe. Eventually his name was cleared. His last Hollywood film was in 1968, “The Fox.” His recently written play, “Strait Jacket,” is about to be staged in London.

While “Casablanca” brought him a certain fame, Koch still favors two others of his movies far more: “Letter From an Unknown Woman” and “No Sad Songs for Me.”

After “Casablanca,” the Epsteins were rewarded with producer status at Warner and made “Mr. Skeffington.” Epstein, too, finds his personal writing favorites beyond “Casablanca.” They are the features “Pete ‘n’ Tillie,” “Reuben, Reuben,” and the one he remembers most warmly, “Light in the Piazza,” which came and went as fast as any light in any piazza.

He continues to work. He has a finished script, an agent, and has raised half the money needed these days to get a movie made.

The two writers plan on meeting again next week when, in classic Hollywood style, King Hassan II of Morocco co-hosts the “re-premiere” Tuesday of the movie at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

It will be for Koch only the fourth time and for Epstein the umpteenth time to see the one movie they seem always to be remembered for.

And are so often misquoted.