Pop Culture 101 - CASABLANCA

Casablanca did not truly strike a resounding chord with American culture until about 20 years after its 1942 release. In the 1960s, a few years after Humphrey Bogart's death in 1957, a movie theater called The Brattle in Cambridge, Massachusetts started reviving Casablanca for three weeks every year, drawing enthusiastic and increasingly larger crowds. Eventually, fans started showing up wearing trench coats and snap-brim hats like Bogie. These fans would even recite dialogue with the film, a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

As a bona fide cultural artifact and generational touchstone for millions of people, Casablanca has inspired countless spoofs and references in other films. Perhaps the most famous is Woody Allen's playful homage to the film and Bogart's persona in Play It Again, Sam (1972), directed by Herbert Ross. In this imaginative comedy, Allen plays an unlucky-in-love neurotic whose muse happens to be the ghost of Humphrey Bogart. Other references to Bogie and Casablanca can be seen in What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Murder By Death (1976).

Of course, not all references to this essential film classic are in good taste. Exhibit A for the prosecution: Caboblanco (1980), a murky rip-off of the Michael Curtiz classic starring Charles Bronson as a barkeeper in Peru and Jason Robards in Conrad Veidt's Nazi role. More recently, the plot was lifted for the Pamela Anderson Lee opus, Barb Wir (1996) with Lee in the Bogart role!

Another, more lighthearted spoof occurred in Bugs Bunny's return to animated shorts, "Carrotblanca" (1995) which saw many of our favorite Warner Bros. cartoon stars filling the shoes of Bogie and company: Bugs (in the Bogie role), Sylvester (as Slazlo), Daffy Duck (as Sam), Tweety (as Usmarte), Pepe le Pew (as Louie), and Yosemite Sam (as General Pandemonium).

And don't forget that our own Essentials host, director Rob Reiner, paid a loving tribute to Casablanca with his own 1989 comedy, When Harry Met Sally. The subject of the film first comes up during Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan's introductory journey to New York City at the beginning of the film. As their relationship continues, the film remains central to their maturing friendship and budding romance.

In 1999, The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Quotations added four quotes from famous movies. They are: "E.T. phone home." (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982); "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (Gone With the Wind, 1939); "Go ahead, make my day." (Sudden Impact, 1984), and "Here's looking at you, kid." (Casablanca).

Millions of Casablanca fans were outraged in 1998 when the sequel, As Time Goes By, hit bookstores with an initial run of 1.1 million copies. The writer, Michael Walsh, wrote the book as a hired hand and admitted that he was never a huge fan of the film. The Boston Globe observed that the ending to his book "maintains the spirit of the film's finale."

by Scott McGee