Casablanca not formalised until 1910. Under the French rule, Muslim anti-Jewish riots occurred in 1908. The famous 1942 film "Casablanca" (starring Humphrey Bogart) underlined the city's colonial status at the time—depicting it as the scene of a power struggle between competing European powers. The film has a cosmopolitan cast of characters (American, French, German, Spaniard, Czech, Norwegian, Austrian, Bulgarian, Russian, and some other nationalities). Europeans formed almost half the population. During the 1940s and 1950s, Casablanca was a major centre of anti-French rioting. A bomb attack on 25 December 1953 (Christmas Day) caused 16 deaths. Operation Torch (initially called Operation Gymnast)
Casablanca (film) colleges have adopted the tradition. Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology who had attended one of these screenings, has said that the experience was "the acting out of my own personal rite of passage". The tradition helped the movie remain popular while other films famous in the 1940s have faded from popular memory. By 1977, "Casablanca" was the most frequently broadcast film on American television. On the film's 50th anniversary, the "Los Angeles Times" called "Casablanca"s great strength "the purity of its Golden Age Hollywoodness [and] the enduring craftsmanship of its resonantly hokey dialogue". Bob Strauss wrote in the newspaper