A Night in Casablanca
Encyclopedia
A Night in Casablanca was the twelfth Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...

 movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, starring Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

, Chico Marx
Chico Marx
Leonard "Chico" Marx was an American comedian and film star as part of the Marx Brothers. His persona in the act was that of a dim-witted albeit crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes, and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat.As the first-born of the...

, and Harpo Marx
Harpo Marx
Adolph "Harpo" Marx was an American comedian and film star. He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances...

. The picture was directed by Archie Mayo
Archie Mayo
Archie Mayo was a movie director and stage actor who moved to Hollywood in 1915 and began working as a director in 1917....

 and written by Joseph Fields
Joseph Fields
Joseph Albert Fields was an American playwright, theatre director, screenwriter, and film producer.-Life and career:Fields was born in New York City, the son of vaudevillean Lew Fields...

 and Roland Kibbee
Roland Kibbee
Roland Kibbee was an American screenwriter and producer.- Works :...

, and is generally considered one of the better of the Marx Brothers' later films.

Plot

Set in Casablanca
Casablanca
Casablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...

 shortly after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, escaped Nazi war criminal Heinrich Stubel (Sig Ruman) has steadily murdered three different 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 (Groucho), 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 Corbacchio (Chico), owner of the Yellow Camel company, who appoints himself as Kornblow's bodyguard, aided and abetted by Stubel's valet Rusty (Harpo). In his many efforts to murder Kornblow, Stubel sends beautiful Beatrice Reiner (Lisette Verea) to romance the clueless manager.

Before Stubel can make his escape to the airfield with the loot, Kornblow, his friends, and Miss Reiner 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, Corbacchio and Rusty eventually crash Stubel's plane into a police station where the brothers expose Stubel as an escaped Nazi.

Cast

  • Groucho Marx
    Groucho Marx
    Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

     as Manager Ronald Kornblow
  • Harpo Marx
    Harpo Marx
    Adolph "Harpo" Marx was an American comedian and film star. He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances...

     as Rusty
  • Chico Marx
    Chico Marx
    Leonard "Chico" Marx was an American comedian and film star as part of the Marx Brothers. His persona in the act was that of a dim-witted albeit crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes, and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat.As the first-born of the...

     as Corbaccio
  • Sig Ruman
    Sig Ruman
    Sig Ruman was a German-American actor known for his comic portrayals of pompous villains.-Life and career:...

     as Count Pfefferman/Heinrich Stubel
  • Charles Drake
    Charles Drake
    Charles Drake was an American actor.-Biography:Drake was born as Charles Ruppert in New York City. He graduated from Nichols College and became a salesman. In 1939, he turned to acting and signed a contract with Warner Brothers. He wasn't immediately successful...

     as Lieutenant Pierre Delmar
  • Lois Collier
    Lois Collier
    Lois Collier was an American film actress born in Salley, South Carolina. She was sometimes credited as Lois Collyer....

     as Annette
  • Lisette Verea as Beatrice Reiner
  • Lewis L. Russell
    Lewis Lord Russell
    Lewis Lord Russell was an American actor of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s who starred in a number of vaudeville shows, Broadway dramas, and Hollywood films, including The Lost Weekend and the Marx Brothers film, A Night in Casablanca .-Early life and work:Born "George Lewis Lord" in Farmington,...

     as Governor Galoux
  • Dan Seymour
    Dan Seymour
    Dan Seymour was a character actor who frequently played villains in Warner Bros. films. He appeared in several Humphrey Bogart films, including Casablanca, Key Largo, and To Have and Have Not....

     as Prefect of Police Captain Brizzard
  • Frederick Giermann as Kurt
  • Harro Mellor as Emile
  • David Hoffman as Spy
  • Paul Harvey
    Paul Harvey (actor)
    Paul Harvey was an American actor who appeared in at least 177 films.-Selected filmography:*They Shall Have Music *Behind the News *Moonlight Masquerade *Spellbound...

     as Mr. Smythe

Controversy

A popular myth (spread in part by Groucho himself) surrounding the movie is that the Marx Brothers were threatened with a lawsuit by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 for the use of the word "Casablanca" in the title, it being an infringement on the company's rights to the 1942 film Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...

.
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; A Night At The Opera
A Night at the Opera (film)
A Night at the Opera is a 1935 American comedy film starring Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx, and featuring Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Margaret Dumont, Sig Ruman, and Walter Woolf King. It was the first film the Marx Brothers made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after their departure from...

and A Day At The Races
A Day at the Races (film)
Further reading* Elisabeth Buxbaum: Veronika, der Lenz ist da. Walter Jurmann – Ein Musiker zwischen den Welten und Zeiten. Mit einem Werkverzeichnis von Alexander Sieghardt. Edition Steinbauer, Wien 2006, ISBN 3-902494-18-2-External links:*...

.

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 has said that an early draft named his character "Humphrey Bogus", a reference to the leading actor in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....

. Warner Bros. did not actually litigate, or even threaten to litigate, but it did issue a formal inquiry to the Marx Brothers concerning the plot and script of the film.

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. These letters were among those he donated to the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

, and he reprinted them in his book The Groucho Letters, which he published in 1967.

In the end, the matter died without legal action, and the storyline of the film was changed to be a send-up of the genre rather than Casablanca specifically. Warner Bros. now owns the distribution rights to this film via Castle Hill Productions
Castle Hill Productions
Castle Hill Productions is an independent television and film distribution company handling classic and independent films whose library spans eight decades.-Background:...

.

External links

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