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) Harmetz argues that they "brought to a dozen small roles in "Casablanca" an understanding and a desperation that could never have come from Central Casting". They were frequently cast as Nazis in war films, even though many were Jewish. The comedian Jack Benny may have had an unbilled cameo role, as was claimed by a contemporary newspaper advertisement and in the "Casablanca" press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." In a later column, he responded to a follow-up commenter, "I think you're