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) depths" as a "phenomenon worthy of awe." "Casablanca" holds a 97% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 77 reviews, with the consensus: "An undisputed masterpiece and perhaps Hollywood's quintessential statement on love and romance, "Casablanca" has only improved with age, boasting career-defining performances from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman." In the November/December 1982 issue of "American Film", Chuck Ross claimed that he retyped the screenplay to "Casablanca", changing the title back to "Everybody Comes to Rick's" and the name of the piano player to Dooley Wilson, and submitted it to 217 agencies. Eighty-five of them read it; of those,