“Play it, Sam... of all the gin joints... we’ll always have... a hill of beans...”

CASABLANCA

When Reagan slept in The White House, an anti-Bedtime For Bonzo factoid began insisting he had been set as Rick opposite Ann Sheridan. However, there is no mention of Reagan (only Sheridan) in any Warners memos of the period. The origin of the canard would appear to be a mistaken publicity release in January 1942... and even then, it was for another of his eternal second banana roles as Victor Laszlo.

Warner's production chief Hal Wallis paid $20,000 in 1941 for the never produced play, Everybody Comes To Rick's. He always felt Bogart was the ideal Rick - and refused the big boss Jack Warner's idea of George Brent, Arthur Kennedy or Dennis Morgan. And forget George Raft! “I don't think,” said Wallis, “he should do just what he wants to do when he wants to do it.” Raft immediately quit the studio.

When the film won Best Picture, Wallis and Warner raced top the stage. Warner won, took the Oscar - and Hal never spoke to him again.

Producer Robert Buckner called Rick:

“Two-parts Hemingway,

one-part Scott Fitzgerald

and a dash of cafe Christ.”

With Rhett Butler's philosophy “in, at least, once instance, word for word,” noted David Selznick in praising the movie. (Bogie improvised: “Here's looking at you, kid”).

Any idea of Sheridan's famous oomph ceased once Rick's old American flame, Lois, became European Ilsa. Wallis thought of Hedy Lamarr; he even re-titled the play, Casablanca , due to her successful Algiers, 1938. "Too complex," said Lamarrvellous, an even worse judge of writing than men (she wed six). “Had I selected Casablanca, it might have changed the direction of my career.” She only selected it - for a radio re-run. With Alan Ladd.

Wallis next fancied Paris darlings Michèle Morgan and Edwige Feuillère , until testing their Engleesh. Nor was he smitten with Tamara Toumanova (future wife of writer Casey Robinson, hired to add a romantic touch to the script) . Wallis then sent co-writer Julius J Epstein to sweet-talk Selznick into releasing Ingrid Bergman.

“Tell him the story!”

“What story?” yelled Epstein.

“We haven’t worked it out yet.”

“Wing it,” said Wallis.

Epstein did, getting nowhere for 30 minutes until saying: “Oh the hell with it. It's gonna be a lot like Algiers, lots of cigarette smoke and guitar music.”

Selznick finally looked up from his lunch: “OK, you got Bergman.” She signed on April 14, 1942 - in an exchange arrangement for Olivia De Havilland.

“Ingrid for $25,000, me for $50,000 - that's how I lost it,” recalled Michèle Morgan. “Jack Warner objected to RKO's loan fee for me. For compensation, they gave me Passage to Marseille with Bogart.” Not so memorable. As Lamarr had commented: “There's a lot of ifs and buts in being an actress.”

Convinced that RKO's Paul Henreid - “a bit of a ham” yet badly wanted by MGM - would never agree to be Laszlo, Wallis looked at Joseph Cotten, Philip Dorn, Ian Hunter, Dean Jagger, Herbert Marshall. Director Otto Preminger was first seen as the Nazi Strasser - finally passed to MGM's Conrad Veidt. (Henreid, full name Paul George Julius Henreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau, died 13 days before MGM's 50th anniversary re-issue of the film),

And Play-it-Sam (never Play-it-again-Sam)

was nearly Play-it-Samantha...

Hal Wallis juggled awhile between New York chanteuse Hazel Scott, the jazzy Ella Fitzgerald and a newcomer on the LA club scene, a certain Elena Horn - alias Bill Cosby's favourite chanteuse, Lena Horne. Wallis then switched to Clarence Muse before loaning Paramount's Dooley Wilson (“he isn't ideal but...”) for $500 a week for seven weeks - more money than Peter Lorre got.

Promised equal billing with Bogart and Bergman, Henreid signed on for $25,000, matching Bergman. Michael Curtiz told anyone who listened that he only directed the film for the money. He got double Bogart's $36,667 - which covered having Bogie dub in Wallis' re-written climactic line to the $950,000 Production 410: “Our expenses (pause ) - Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

The first script - by Wally Kline (Wallis' brother-in-law) and Aenas MacKenzie - was a mess. While Bogie went Across The Pacific, 1942, as Rick Leland, a re-run Sam Spade and model for Casablanca's Rick Blaine. Wallis ran for help to The Boys - Phil and Julie . The twin scenarists Philip and Julius Epstein.

“Now everyone says they wrote scenes,” Julie told me in Deauville, France. Two did, Koch and Robinson, but only The Boys worked on it ten hours a day. For $15,208 each. (Koch, who claimed it as his script, got $4,200 for a tune-up).

“Oh, it's such a phoney picture,” insisted Julie about the American Film Institute's #2 film of all time. “Not one word of truth in it! There never were letters of transit. Germans never wore uniform in Casablanca, that was part of the Vichy agreement. But we didn't know what was going in Casablanca. We didn't even know where Casablanca was! [Only Dooley Wilson had been there].

“I can't understand the picture's staying power. It's camp! It's kitsch! [Pause]. If it was made today, line for line, with each performance just as good, it would be laughed off the screen.

“Frankly and honestly, it’s just... slick shit!”