Written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison in 1940, prior to the United States' entry into World War II, the play was anti-Nazi and pro-French Resistance.
Feeling they had not received full recognition for their contributions, Burnett and Alison tried to regain control of the property, but the New York Court of Appeals ruled in 1986 that they had signed away their rights in their agreement with Warner Bros.
Under their threat not to renew the agreement when the copyright reverted to them, the film company paid them each $100,000 (equivalent to $240,000 in 2023) and the right to produce the original play.
In the summer of 1938, while on vacation from his job as English teacher at a vocational school, Burnett and his wife Frances traveled to Vienna to help Jewish relatives smuggle money out of the country occupied by the Nazis since March of that year.
[2] A story editor, Irene Diamond, had read it in manuscript in New York, and recommended it to her boss, producer Hal B. Wallis, as "sophisticated hokum".
"As Time Goes By", written by Herman Hupfeld, was first performed by Frances Williams in the musical comedy Everybody's Welcome, which had played on Broadway from October 1931 to February 1932.
[1] In 1991, Howard Koch, who was then 89 years old, said in a letter to the Los Angeles Times that, after rereading the play, he thought it had provided "the spine" of the movie.
In 1986, the New York State Court of Appeals determined that the pair had signed away all rights to their work under the terms of their agreement when they sold the play.
In April it transferred to the West End, running at the Whitehall Theatre for six weeks under the simplified title Rick's Bar Casablanca.
After a trip to Europe with his wife Frances in 1938 to help their Jewish relatives smuggle money out of Nazi-occupied Austria, the Burnetts went to the Mediterranean.
[5]: 593 Their first play, One in a Million, an anti-Nazi spy vehicle, attracted the interest of director Otto Preminger, but no film project developed.
[5]: 597–598 Burnett wrote, produced, and directed many radio plays, including the 1952 ABC series Cafe Istanbul, with the German actress Marlene Dietrich as Mlle.
Alison and Burnett first co-wrote A Million to One, an anti-Nazi play, in which Otto Preminger took an interest, but no film project developed.
[11] In 1943 Alison had collaborated with lyricist Stella Unger and blind pianist Alec Templeton on an un-produced musical, Cabbages and Kings (also called Tea Tray in the Sky), described as a "modern Alice in Wonderland.
Two days after her death notice appeared in The New York Times, her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and friends remembered her with a special screening of Casablanca at the Museum of Modern Art.