Everybody Comes to Rick's

Everybody Comes to Rick's is an unpublished play which was the basis for the movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It was written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. It was produced at the Whitehall Theatre in London in 1991.

Origin

In the summer of 1938, while on vacation from his job as English teacher at a vocational school, Murray and his wife Frances travelled to occupied Vienna to help Jewish relatives there, for the Nazis had occupied the city in March that year. Later, the couple visited a small town in the south of France, where they went to a nightclub overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. There a black pianist played jazz for a crowd of French, Nazis, and refugees. Burnett returned to the USA via UK and stayed a few weeks in Bournemouth - it is at this time that the first diary notes that became the basis of the play were written. Burnett's experiences in Vienna inspired him to write a play in the summer of 1940 about a cynical bar owner of the Cafe Americain in Casablanca, Morocco named Rick. Eventually, Rick helps an idealistic Czech resistance fighter escape with the woman Rick loves.

Casablanca

Main article: Casablanca (film)

When Burnett and Alison failed to find a Broadway producer, they sold the play to Warner Brothers for $20,000. Warner Brothers first handed the script to the screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein, and changed the title to Casablanca. While some dialogue, particularly short quips, from the original play were used verbatim in the film, for the most part, the play merely acts as an outline of the movie, organizing major plot points and character interactions.

Major overhauls were made to the characters of Rick and Lois Meredith (Ilsa, in the movie). In the play, both lead characters had undesirable and unadmirable personalities. Much less refined than Humphrey Bogart's Rick, the play's character called Ilsa a "bitch" and Sam's equivalent a "bastard" among other things. Lois Meredith, Rick's love interest and an American was changed to Norwegian and renamed Ilsa Lund, and her conspicuously sexual demeanor was toned down completely, making her at the same time, much more compatible with the Hays code, and a more sympathetic character. Additionally the treatment of Sam, who in the play is known as 'The Rabbit' is merely a stereotype of the era which is in direct contrast to the role of confidant that he played in the film.

The inclusion of "As Time Goes By" came from Burnett and Alison's play. The song, from 1931, had been Burnett's favorite when he was a student at Cornell. "As Time Goes By," written by Herman Hupfeld, was first performed by Frances Williams in the musical comedy, Everybody's Welcome, which played on Broadway from October 1931 to February 1932. The café La Belle Aurore in Paris, where some of the film's most famous scenes take place, was based on the French nightclub that Murray and his first wife (Frances) had visited in 1938, where a black piano player inspired the character of Sam, played by Dooley Wilson. The real nightclub was on Cap Ferrat, on the French Riviera, and was also called Cafe Americain, as in the film.

Character Comparison in Play v. Film

Name in Play	Name in Film	Notes
Rick Blaine	Rick Blaine
Lois Meredith	Ilsa Lund	changed nationality (USA-> Norway)
Luis Rinaldo	Louis Renault
The 'Rabbit'	Sam
Victor Laszlo	Victor Laszlo
Senor Martinez	Signor Ferrari	nationality (changed to Italian)
Guillermo Ugarte	Ugarte	nationality (changed to Italian)

Recognition

The film's opening credits say 'Screen Play by...From a Play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison". However, after the success of Casablanca, Warner Brothers and the three screenwriters downplayed the role of Everybody Comes to Rick's in creating the movie. Although Koch and the Epsteins received an Academy Award for best screenplay in 1943, very little recognition was given to Burnett and Alison. Even the leading actors seemed unaware of Everybody Comes to Rick's. In 1974, Ingrid Bergman said in an interview: "Casablanca based on a play? No, I don't think so ... for we didn't know how the movie would end." A year earlier, Howard Koch wrote in New York Magazine that Everybody Comes to Rick's provided an exotic locale and a character named Rick who ran a café, but little in the way of a story adaptable to the screen. Burnett unsuccessfully sued for $6.5 million. By 1991, Howard Koch, who was 89 years old, admitted in a letter to the Los Angeles Times that Murray's and Alison's complaints had been justified.

Burnett and Alison also sued Warner Brothers, when the television series based on Casablanca aired in 1983, but the courts decided that they had signed away all rights to their work. Finally, when they threatened not to renew their agreement with Warner Brothers when it would expire in 1997, they received $100,000 and the right to produce the original play.

Stage production

In 1991 Everybody Comes to Rick's was produced by David Kelsey at the Whitehall Theatre in London.^[1] Leslie Grantham played Rick.

The authors

Murray Burnett

Murray Burnett was born in New York City in 1911. He was a high school teacher before becoming a playwright. His second wife was actress Adrienne Bayan. They met when she had a role in Hickory Street. Burnett was the uncle of documentary director Barbara Kopple. Burnett died on September 23, 1997 in New York City.

Burnett also wrote the play Hickory Street, based on his experiences as a teacher, which opened on Broadway in 1944. He wrote, produced, and directed many radio plays, including the 1952 ABC series Café Istanbul with Marlene Dietrich as Mlle. Madou. This show was transformed into Time for Love which ran for 38 episodes on CBS Radio in 1953.

Joan Alison

Joan Alison was born in 1902 and died 31 March 1992.

References

Notes

1. ^ http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1991/july/Sa19175.htm

Bibliography

• Harmetz, Aljean. Round up the Usual Suspects: The Making of "Casablanca". Bogart, Bergman, and World War II, New York: Hyperion, 1992
• The Creator of Rick's Cafe Seeks Rights to 'Casablanca' Characters, New York Times, Oct 10, 1985
• Obituary: Murray Burnett, 86, Writer Of Play Behind 'Casablanca', New York Times, Sep 29, 1997.
• Obituary: Murray Burnett, The Independent, Oct 15, 1997.
• Pay it Sam, The Weekend Australian, Jan. 31, 1998.
• Casablanca, DVD, Turner 1999 with Murray Burnett interview about Cap Ferrat

External links

• Murray Burnett at the Internet Movie Database
• Wordpress Martin N. Kriegl, CASABLANCA A comparison between the classic motion picture and its stage play source, Wordpress, 2003. Retrieved 6 November 2008.