Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World…
By Mitch Berg
With perfect timing, Red notes that today is the 64th anniversary of the release of Casablanca.
It’s a movie I’ve seen about forty times, and for good reason.
Casablanca premiered at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City. It was not expected to be a long-lasting mythical evocation of the quintessential American ideals we all aspire to, from generation to generation. It was just supposed to be another one of the pro-war propaganda movies the studios were churning out at that time. It went on to win the Academy Award the next year – but again, lots of films win Academy Awards and don’t go on to achieve legendary status.
The legend around the film began growing in the late 50s, a couple of years after Bogart’s death. The stories about the Casablanca showings at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge Massachusetts are now famous … and make me wish for a time machine.
Oh, me too, Red. Me too.
I think I need to watch it tonight.
