Casablanca (film) in 1942 to work on the "Why We Fight" series in Washington, D.C. While they were gone, the other credited writer, Howard Koch, was assigned; he produced thirty to forty pages. When the Epstein brothers returned after about a month, they were reassigned to "Casablanca" and—contrary to what Koch claimed in two published books—his work was not used. The Epstein brothers and Koch never worked in the same room at the same time during the writing of the script. Koch later commented, "When we began, we didn't have a finished script ... Ingrid Bergman came to me and said, 'Which
Casablanca (film) seats and a retractable roof. As Tangier was in Spanish territory, the theatre's wartime bar heaved with spies, refugees and underworld hoods, securing its place in cinematic history as the inspiration for Rick's Cafe in "Casablanca"." The scene of the singing of "La Marseillaise" in the bar is attributed by the film scholar Julian Jackson as an adaptation of a similar scene from Jean Renoir's film from 5 years before titled "La Grande Illusion". The first writers assigned to the script were twins Julius and Philip Epstein who, against the wishes of Warner Brothers, left at Frank Capra's request early