A Night in Casablanca

85 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglish

A Night in Casablanca is a 1946 American comedy film directed by Archie Mayo and starring the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, and Chico). The screenplay was written by Joseph Fields and Roland Kibbee. It was an independent production released by United Artists. The cast also features actress and singer Lisette Verea. The villain is portrayed by Sig Ruman, who had roles in the earlier Marx Brothers films A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937).

Plot

Set in Casablanca shortly after World War II, escaped Nazi war criminal Heinrich Stubel has steadily murdered three managers of the Hotel Casablanca. Disguised as a Count Pfefferman, Stubel's goal is to reclaim the stolen art treasures that he has hidden in the hotel. However, the only way he can do this undetected is by murdering the hotel's managers and running the hotel himself.

The newest manager of Hotel Casablanca is former motel proprietor Ronald Kornblow, who is very much unaware that he has been hired because no one else will dare take the position. Inept Kornblow takes charge of the hotel, and eventually crosses paths with Corbaccio, owner of the Yellow Camel company, who appoints himself as Kornblow's bodyguard, aided and abetted by Stubel's valet Rusty. In his many efforts to murder Kornblow, Stubel sends beautiful Beatrice Reiner to romance the clueless manager.

Before Stubel can make his escape to the airfield with the loot, Kornblow, Corbaccio, Rusty and Beatrice invade his hotel room and sneak from suitcase to closet and back again to unpack his bags, which serves to drive him thoroughly mad. Arrested on false charges, Kornblow, Corbaccio and Rusty eventually crash Stubel's plane into a police station where the brothers expose Stubel as an escaped Nazi.

Cast

• Groucho Marx as Ronald Kornblow
• Harpo Marx as Rusty
• Chico Marx as Corbaccio
• Charles Drake as Lieutenant Pierre Delmar
• Lois Collier as Annette Bernard
• Sig Ruman as Count Max Pfefferman alias Heinrich Stubel
• Lisette Verea as Beatrice Reiner
• Lewis L. Russell as Governor Gandaloux
• Dan Seymour as Prefect of Police Captain Brizzard
• Frederick Giermann as Kurt
• Harro Mellor as Emile
• David Hoffman as Spy
• Paul Harvey as Mr. Smythe

Legal stunt

A popular story (spread in part by Groucho himself) surrounding the movie is that the Marx Brothers were threatened with a lawsuit by Warner Bros. for the use of the word "Casablanca" in the film's title due to it being an infringement on the company's rights to the 1942 film Casablanca. Groucho responded with a letter asserting that he and his siblings had use of the word "brothers" prior to the establishment of Warner Brothers (and many others had before that), and often the story is told that Groucho threatened a counter-suit based on this assertion. He also mentioned that he would consider further legal action by pointing out to Warners that the title of their current hit film Night and Day infringed on the titles of two Marx Brothers films released by MGM: A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.

The true story is that the original storyline for the film was intended to be a direct parody of Casablanca, with the characters having similar-sounding names to the characters and actors in the 1942 film. Groucho Marx said that an early draft named his character "Humphrey Bogus", a reference to the leading actor in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart.^[1] Warner Bros. did not litigate, nor threaten to litigate. However, the studio issued a formal inquiry to the Marx Brothers concerning the plot and script of the film.^[2]

The Marx Brothers exploited the situation for publicity, making it appear to the public that a frivolous lawsuit was in the works, and Groucho sent several open letters to Warner Bros. to get newspaper coverage.^[2] These letters were among those he donated to the Library of Congress, and he reprinted them in his 1967 book The Groucho Letters.^[3] There is no evidence that Warner Bros. ever responded to any of Groucho’s letters.

Ultimately, the matter ended without legal action, and the storyline of the film was changed to be a send-up of the genre rather than Casablanca specifically.^[2]

References

External links

• A Night in Casablanca at the American Film Institute Catalog
• A Night in Casablanca at IMDb
• A Night in Casablanca at AllMovie
• A Night in Casablanca at the TCM Movie Database
• The Warner Bros. story at snopes.com
• The letter to Warner Bros. (broken link), archived version by the Wayback Machine.
• The Marx Brothers Council Podcast episode discussing the film