Murray Burnett (1910–1997)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3038046.html

The similarities, especially near the beginning, jump out at any reader who knows Casablanca - some of Burnett and Alison's lines survived unchanged to filming, which makes it a bit rough that they did not share in the Oscar for the screenplay. "As Time Goes By" was theirs. So were "Play it, Sam"; "We'll always have Paris" and "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world..." At the same time, the film is a considerable improvement on the original. The battle of the anthems is there, but on stage the Germans are allowed to finish singing rather than be interrupted.

The character of Sam is crucially upgraded in the film as well. It's odd, because of all characters his lines are possibly least changed (well, him and Ugarte); but the fact that he is just called "the Rabbit" in the theatre script and speaks in dialect is pretty demeaning. Dooley Wilson invests the part with considerable dignity, but so do the other actors.

Even more crucially, the female lead of the play is not a twenty-something Scandinavian but a thirty-something American, Lois Meredith, who got to know Rick in Paris in 1937 when both were cheating on their respective spouses; she has now ended up with Laszlo, and explicitly sleeps with Rick to try and get the letters (whereas we are left wondering a bit about Ilsa in Casablanca). Laszlo too is less heroic, his dispute with the Germans being about money as much as politics. Luis Rinaldo (rather than Louis Renault) and Rick himself are also much less attractive characters; it's difficult to care as much about what happens to them as to their film counterparts. Also - complete spoiler - at the end, though Lois and Laszlo make their getaway, Strasser is not shot but instead arrests Rick for helping them escape, which makes one wonder what the point was.

It's a bit cruel to say (as one critic did) that Everybody Comes to Rick's is the worst play ever written, but it certainly isn't up to the mark of its descendant.… (mais)

This may be the most rare item I own. It's not a "book" as such, but a full xerox copy of a stage play. The rights to the play were bought unproduced, and it became the basis for the classic movie "Casablanca." It's only been produced once since, in 1991 in London, when Warner Bros. was negotiating with author Murray Burnett to renew the rights.

My copy was made from the UCLA Theater Arts library. Their copy itself was a bound xerox. The original is stamped, "IMPORTANT: Return to Warner Bros. Inc. Burbank, Calif. Story Library." When I called Warner's in the late 1980's, they said they didn't have a copy, which is why I went to UCLA in the first place. UCLA's catalog, however, no longer lists this item.

The play is surprisingly close to the film, with two major differences: Ilsa is an American woman named Lois Meredith, and Rick is arrested by Strasser in the end. The first was obviously adapted by the eventual screenwriters when Ingrid Bergman was attached to the project. The second may be explained by noting the US was not yet in the war when the play was written.

Lois is written as a saucier character than in the movie. When Lois sits at Rick's table -- who as famously as in the movie never fraternizes with the customers -- Luis Rinaldo, the prefect of police (renamed Louis Renault for the film) says: "Madame, you have just made history."

Lois' reply: "It isn't the first time. You must read my memoirs."… (mais)