Casablanca Premieres Weeks After the Allies Land in North Africa

On November 26, 1942, Warner Bros. held the world premiere of Casablanca in New York City. The release had been advanced abruptly to capitalize on current military events, coming merely weeks after Allied troops landed in French North Africa during Operation Torch. Although produced as a standard wartime studio drama, the film was thrust into the spotlight of international affairs, providing moviegoers with an immediate cinematic parallel to recent events in North Africa.

The film originated from an unproduced stage play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Around the start of 1942, at the urging of Warner Bros. story editor Irene Diamond, the studio bought the play's film rights for $20,000, a record at the time for an unproduced play. The narrative was set in December 1941, deliberately preceding the entry of the United States into the war, and followed Rick Blaine, an American expatriate navigating moral and political neutrality inside Vichy-controlled French Morocco.