Here’s Looking at More ‘Casablanca’

Michael Walsh knew when he was “on a literary suicide mission” when he signed on to write “As Time Goes By,” a novel that follows the characters introduced in the movie “Casablanca.” How dared anyone tamper with “Casablanca,” which Walsh himself calls the Holy Grail of Hollywood films?

The book--which goes on sale today--wasn’t even out when the first hate mail was posted on bookseller Amazon.com’s Internet site by an irate New Yorker:

“Why muck with a classic of one medium, try to force it into another, and then make matters worse by telling us what happened after the fade-out . . . ?”

Walsh says he is prepared for the ire of “Casablanca” devotees who think he should have left Rick and Louis walking off together in the Casablanca fog--just as “Gone With the Wind” lovers wish Alexandra Ripley had left Scarlett alone in the Atlanta fog.

But this isn’t a sequel, the Boston-based 48-year-old Walsh insists.

“Sequel’s a bad word. It implies kind of slavish following, implies that it’s not as good as the original. [This book] is much more like ‘The Godfather, Part II’ than like ‘Porky’s II,’ not that I ever saw ‘Porky’s II.’ . . .”

Warner Books--which published Walsh’s first novel, “Exchange Alley,” last year--came to him with the proposal to, well, play “Casablanca” again, an offer he couldn’t refuse, though he’s quick to say he “didn’t get a million-dollar advance like Ripley got” for her GWTW sequel.

Although Walsh hadn’t until then numbered himself among the true “Casablanca” aficionados, he had “too much respect for the original to want to wreck it. I intend for this book to burnish the original film, not take away from it.” If it’s not a sequel, what is it?

“Kind of a frame around it,” Walsh says.

Does the world really want to know more about Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo? Warner Books is betting it does, with a first U.S. printing of 250,000 and editions in 14 other countries.

Those planning to pay $25 to find out what’s been done to their precious “Casablanca”--the 1942 Oscar-winner that recently placed second on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 all-time best films--shouldn’t read further. For others, here’s a synopsis of “As Time Goes By”:

* Rick, Louis and Sam escape to Lisbon and later join up with Victor and Ilsa in London.

* All of the above except Sam get involved in “Operation Hangman,” a successful British government plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the sinister Nazi who was “Reichsprotektor” of Czechoslovakia.

* Louis and Victor perish. Ilsa and Rick wind up--married--back in Casablanca.

This is not all fiction. Heydrich was, of course, a real person, the architect of the Final Solution, and Walsh sticks pretty much to the facts of the assassination while inserting the “Casablanca” characters into the plot.

Working in Munich for Time magazine a decade ago, Walsh interviewed a number of Germans who had lived through World War II and knew well the story of Heydrich, the only major Nazi murdered by the Allies.

“The assassination was the only significant act of Czech resistance during the war,” Walsh says. “It seemed to me very obvious that was what Victor Laszlo was planning” in the movie.

Some “Casablanca” dialogue finds its way into the pages of the novel, “partly in homage and partly from dramatic necessity, and partly to let the reader know that the author is in on the fun too,” Walsh explains. Case in point: The novel’s last line, spoken by Ilsa Blaine, is “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

But in a significant departure from the film, in which Ilsa tells Rick, “You’ll have to do the thinking for both of us,” Ilsa emerges here as a major force, undertaking the dangerous mission of infiltrating Heydrich’s Prague headquarters--trying to avoid his bed while helping plot his demise.

Was Walsh consciously creating a woman for the ‘90s?

“Yes, partly. I tried to walk a line between the ‘40s setting and the sensibility of the reader, but not out of any political correctness. It seems to me the flaw in the original movie--if there is a flaw--is that the three main characters are very passive.”

There was Ilsa, who let Rick do the thinking; there was Rick, the cynic (“I stick my neck out for nobody”) and there was Laszlo, whom Walsh considers “the most strangely passive and plaster saint-like,” even though, Walsh admits, he must have been pretty tough to have stayed one step ahead of the Nazis all that time.

“I tried to give each a slight upgrade in personality,” Walsh continues. “Ilsa is based on a lot of different elements.”

One is the life of actress Ingrid Bergman, who plays Ilsa in the film. Because Bergman was a pianist in her earlier film “Intermezzo,” Walsh made Ilsa a pianist. In making her a spy, he also based her character on Marie Vassiltchikov, a White Russian who helped plot the July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life.

*

The most controversial depiction in “As Time Goes By” is that of Rick Blaine. It’s certain to rattle many “Casablanca” fanatics.

Remember in the film when Renault asks Rick why he doesn’t return to America?

Renault: “Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with a senator’s wife? I like to think that you killed a man. It’s the romantic in me.”

Rick: “It’s a combination of all three.”

Taking his cue from this exchange, Walsh reveals that Rick was born Yitzik Baline and had been a small-time Jewish mobster working for an East Harlem rackets king with more than a passing resemblance to Dutch Schultz. After an adulterous love affair with the wife of a senator that ended with both the senator and his wife dead, Rick emptied his boss’ safe and fled the country.

Walsh acknowledges that “the gangster background might not be ideal for all fans of ‘Casablanca’ who see Rick as some kind of cynical saint.” But, he adds, “Given all the evidence, it just seemed to me that had to be the only possible explanation” of Rick’s background.

“If Rick was 37 in the movie, he obviously comes of age during Prohibition,” Walsh reasons. “And the fact he’s a saloon keeper, he carries a gun, his best friend is black. . . . All the pieces fell into place.”

One thing that bothered Walsh in the film was Rick’s “desperate ennui. Whatever happened to him had to be a lot worse than getting dumped by a girl he’d known for only one week in Paris. Something terrible had to have happened to him for him to cut himself off from human relationships.”

But would Ilsa have fallen for a onetime mobster? Yes, says Walsh.

“It’s Rick’s toughness and his sexiness,” he says. “I mean, she’s married to Mr. Goody Two Shoes. What girl wouldn’t run off with Rick?”

And Walsh does not consider Rick morally dubious, despite his background.

“A lot of young men went into that world [of the mob] because the other world was closed to them. The tremendous anti-Jewish, anti-Irish and anti-Italian feelings on the part of Waspy Americans dictated that many went into less than honorable professions.”

Walsh points out that in the original version of the film script, Rick shoots Maj. Strasser in cold blood, rather than in self-defense.

“That gave me a clue. Some elements of this book are drawn from scenes that didn’t make it into the movie. Rick’s a much crueler person, I think, than we see and would certainly kill to protect someone he loves.”

As he did with Bergman and Ilsa, the author borrowed from Humphrey Bogart’s career in drawing Rick, whom Bogart portrayed.

“I was trying to capture some of the feeling of the Bogart pre-stardom pictures, where he plays the second gangster to Cagney’s tragic gangster. Bogart played ethnic gangsters a lot in the period leading up to ‘The Maltese Falcon.’ ”

Walsh is “happy to argue the point” of why he decided Rick was Jewish. Again, he took hints from the film, such as Rick’s “extreme social liberalism that seemed to me to rule out an Irishman or an Italian right off the bat.”

Walsh is a former music critic and says that “as a critic, I was never a fan of anything.” He believes this quality served him well in writing his “frame” around “Casablanca.”

“One of the challenges of this book was to adopt someone else’s children and then fall in love with them.” Which he says he did. He was proud of Ilsa for the way she rebuffed Heydrich’s amorous advances, admired Rick’s calm and bravery, and changed Victor to make him more lovable, “give him a little more spine. I wanted him to hate Heydrich’s guts, almost like Ahab--he’s going to get this guy.”

*

Walsh has studied “Casablanca” as a scholar, seeking the secret of its enduring place in filmgoers’ hearts. When his 13-year-old daughter saw it, she burst into tears because Rick and Ilsa didn’t get back together. But adults “find it poignant that you give up what you love for something more important,” says Walsh. “Each generation reinterprets [the movie] and passes it on to the next generation.”

He notes, too, the appeal of “the ‘Ship of Fools’ element. It’s a closed circle, a closed society, at Rick’s cafe. People from all over the world are trapped and trying to get out, which makes it kind of a thrilling experience.”

Finally, “everybody hates the Nazis. You can boo them wholeheartedly.”

He thinks the timing of “As Time Goes By” is just right.

“There’s this sort of Zeitgeist element at work here. We saw this summer that ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was a bigger hit than people thought it was going to be, the way it resonated with the baby boomer generation,” a generation suddenly realizing “that their fathers, for whom they had contempt all their lives, did heroic deeds.”

“As Time Goes By,” Walsh says, “is about things like sacrificing something you want for an intangible, higher good,” a notion that he says was heretofore unfashionable with boomers. “Maybe as they’re hitting 50, they’re realizing there’s some good higher than yourself.”

Can “As Time Goes By,” the film, be far behind? Warner Bros. has the rights to the book, but Walsh knows of no plans. (Warner Home Video will release a special edition of “Casablanca,” with recently discovered outtakes and screen tests, on Tuesday).

Will Rick and Ilsa stay in Casablanca?

“I really don’t know,” Walsh says. “I was originally intending just to end it on the plane with her looking into his eyes . . . but it was sort of a cheap way to end it.”

Can we look for a sequel to “As Times Goes By”?

“I wouldn’t want to spoil your fantasy.”

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Ever Wonder What Happened to Blanche?

And what might happen if a few other classics returned in sequels? Consider:

“A Streetcar Named Fervent Desire.” Blanche DuBois escapes from the mental hospital, makes her way to Las Vegas and, through the kindness of a stranger in a casino, wins enough money to save Belle Reve, the old family estate in Mississippi, which she turns into a bed and breakfast. Stella and Stanley Kowalski now depend on her.

“One Flew Over--and Over--the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Chief Bromden, 6 feet 7 inches, is drafted by the Chicago Bulls, who admire his machine-like precision from the free throw line. Meanwhile, Nurse Ratched, blamed for the inmate’s escape, loses her job and ultimately her sanity, and is committed to a lockup facility for veterans.

“Lord and Lady of the Flies.” Ralph (a nice role for Brad Pitt when they make the movie version) sails aboard the British cruiser to Australia where he begins life anew, teaching Australian boys to speak proper English. He marries a Qantas flight attendant (Gwyneth Paltrow?). Jack also debarks in Australia and heads for the outback, where he joins a tribe of Aborigines.

“Catching Up With the Catcher in the Rye.” Holden Caulfield (Leonardo DiCaprio?) gets over being screwed up, marries Jane Gallagher (Cameron Diaz?) and they move to New Hampshire, the only place Holden doesn’t find “really depressing.” He writes his first book, “Pencey Prep,” a morality tale thinly disguised as a novel. Critics hail him as a cross between Ring Lardner and Thomas Hardy.

“The Even Greater Gatsby.” Tom and Daisy Buchanan (Pitt and Paltrow) go through a bitter divorce. She gets a huge financial settlement, buys Gatsby’s old place, names it Gatz’s Green Acres and marries Nick Carraway. Tom, penniless, gets a job pumping gas at Wilson’s garage.

“Glass Menagerie II: Beyond the Unicorn.” Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller (DiCaprio) is jilted by his fiancee, Betty, and comes calling again on Laura Wingfield (Diaz). In a gesture fraught with symbolism, he returns her glass unicorn, which has been mended. Jim becomes the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals. Amanda returns to Mississippi, where she sells glass figurines to tourists.