Casablanca (film) right. The Jack Benny Fan Club can feel vindicated." The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's then-unproduced play "Everybody Comes to Rick's". The Warner Bros. story analyst who read the play, Stephen Karnot, called it (approvingly) "sophisticated hokum", and story editor Irene Diamond, who had discovered the unproduced play on a trip to New York in 1941, convinced producer Hal Wallis to buy the rights in January 1942 for $20,000, the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play. The project was renamed "Casablanca", apparently in imitation of the 1938 hit "Algiers". Although an
Casablanca (film) elements can be criticized, citing unrealistic special effects and the stiff character/portrayal of Laszlo. Critic Leonard Maltin considers "Casablanca" to be "the best Hollywood movie of all time." Rick, according to Rudy Behlmer, is "not a hero ... not a bad guy": he does what is necessary to get along with the authorities and "sticks his neck out for nobody". The other characters, in Behlmer's words, are "not cut and dried" and come into their goodness over the course of the film. Renault begins as a collaborator with the Nazis who extorts sexual favors from refugees and has Ugarte killed.