Origin
In the summer of 1938, while on vacation from his job as English teacher at a vocational school, Murray 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. Later, the couple visited a small town in the south of France, where they went to a nightclub overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. A black pianist played jazz for a crowd of French, Nazis, and refugees.
Burnett returned to the USA via UK, staying a few weeks in Bournemouth; there he started to make notes for his anti-Nazi play. In the summer of 1940, the 27-year-old teacher completed the play in six weeks with the collaboration of Joan Alison. They featured Rick, an American bar owner of the Cafe Americain in Casablanca, Morocco, whose European exiles and refugees frequent the cafe. Eventually, Rick helps an idealistic Czech resistance fighter escape with the woman Rick loves.
Soon after, Carly Wharton and Martin Gabel took an option to produce the play. But there was resistance to the idea that Lois "had slept with Rick in Casablanca in order to get the letters of transit."
Read more about this topic: Everybody Comes To Rick's
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