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 Fan Company Casablanca Fan Company Casablanca Fan Company is a ceiling fan company based in Industry, California. In the late 1970s, the company became known for their premium fans, which were marketed as furniture. The company was founded by Burton A. Burton in 1974. Burton's marketing techniques included inviting customers aboard refurbished 1940s railroad cars from the New York Central Railroad and Rock Island Line. By 1980, Casablanca was selling about US$42M in fans per year. To better cope with the seasonal swings of the ceiling fan business, Casablanca purchased Lavery & Co. in 1984, a Van Nuys, CA-based manufacturer of consumer