NONFICTION - Jan. 31, 1993

ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS: The Making of Casablanca--Bogart, Bergman, and World War II by Aljean Harmetz (Hyperion: $24.95; 402 pp.). How could “Casablanca”--made on a studio “assembly line” that churned out movies like canned tuna--have acquired so much soul? Auteur theorists might credit director Michael Curtiz’s success at keeping the paws of cynical studio chief Jack Warner off his project, but in this lively and accessible history, former New York Times film correspondent Aljean Harmetz shows that the project’s ambitions were not unlike those that inspired B-movies such as “The Return of Dr. X.” “Every script is concocted,” “Casablanca” writer Julius Epstein tells Harmetz, “but ‘Casablanca’ was really concocted. We sat down and tried to manipulate an audience.”

Drawing upon prodigious research that has captured “Casablanca’s” story just as its last raconteurs were dying off, Harmetz credits sheer happenstance for much of the film’s brilliance. Composer Max Steiner hated “As Time Goes By,” for instance, and persuaded producer Hal Wallis to allow him to sub a love song of his own, but Ingrid Bergman, having already trimmed her hair for her part in “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” could not reshoot the necessary scenes.

While Harmetz cites plausible theories about why “Casablanca” spoke to our culture (e.g., Rick’s movement from neutrality to commitment mirrored America’s own feelings just prior to its entry in World War II), she confesses that the film’s success largely remains an enigma. As writer Howard Koch tells her: “I’ve got almost a mystical feeling about ‘Casablanca.’ That it made itself somehow and that we were all conveyers on the belt, taking it there.”