------------------------ [excerpt from Casablanca: Behind The Scenes, by Harlan Lebo, Copyright 1992, Simon & Schuster] -----------------------
Chapter eleven.
The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship.
Warner Brothers originally intended to release Casablanca during the 1943 summer season - more than a year after the cameras first rolled. Instead, by the summer of 1943, the film was already firmly entrenched in U.S. theaters, seen by thousands of troops on the war front, and well on its way to winning the Academy Award for the Best Picture.
Today, Casablanca's reputation as an unfading film classic is undisputed, but it began that journey toward immortality with the aid of two of the most staggering coincidences that ever assisted a motion picture's rise to success.
By the fall of 1942, Allied forces once reeling from near-knockout blows from Axis attack, were prepared for their first substantive forays into enemy territory. Although the actual location of the American push was a closely guarded secret, as November approached the press began to speculate about some of the likeliest spots for an Allied landing.
At the top of the list of probable sites, with its strategic position along the Atlantic and easy access to the Mediterranean, was Casablanca.
In the early days of November, the near unbelievable coincidence that Warner Bros. possessed a film ready to distribute with a theme focused on the precise location of the focal point of World War II was not lost on studio executives.
"I thought you might be interested in the attached front page from the San Francisco Chronicle, with mention of Casablanca coming into more and more prominence in the war picture," Hal Wallis wrote to Jack Warner on November 6. "This writer feels that Casablanca is apt to be more of a hot spot than Dakar."
Indeed, the Chronicle was correct. By the time Warner was reading Wallis's memo an armada carrying joint U.S. and British forces had already begun their November 7 invasion of French Morocco and Algeria, establishing the final foothold necessary to retake Axis-held territory in Africa.
By November 1942, although U.S. forces had already inflicted substantial damage on Japanese forces during the war in the Pacific, the invasion of North Africa marked the first substantial push by the United States against the Nazis.
The effect on the American home front was electric - as stunning as the bombing raid on Tokyo led by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle had been seven months earlier. The city of Casablanca roared into the headlines of every newspaper, magazine, and radio program in the United States.
For Warner Bros., the moment to release its like-named picture would never be more opportune. Within days of the announcement of the North Africa invasion, the studio decided to reschedule the release and pushed up the premiere to the first convenient date that could be arranged.
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