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) screen lovers reunited only to part. The irrefutible ["sic"] proof that great movies are accidents." Screenwriting teacher Robert McKee maintains that the script is "the greatest screenplay of all time". In 2006, the Writers Guild of America, West agreed, voting it the best ever in its list of the 101 greatest screenplays. The film has been selected by the American Film Institute for many of their lists of important American films: "Casablanca" was initially released on Betamax and VHS by Magnetic Video and later by CBS/Fox Video (as United Artists owned the rights at the time). It was next released