Main Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Lisette Verea, Charles Drake
Release Year: 1946
Country: US
Run Time: 85 minutes
Plot
After a five-year absence, the Marx Brothers returned to the screen in the independently-produced effort A Night in Casablanca. Originally conceived as a parody of Casablanca (with character names like "Humphrey Bogus" and "Lowen Behold"), the film emerged as a spoof of wartime melodramas in general. Someone has been methodically murdering the managers of the Hotel Casablanca, and that someone is escaped Nazi war criminal Heinrich Stubel (Sig Ruman). Disguised as a Count Pfefferman, Stubel intends to reclaim the stolen art treasures that he's hidden in a secret room somewhere in the hotel, and the only way he can do this undetected is by bumping off the managers and taking over the hotel himself. The newest manager of Hotel Casablanca is former motel proprietor Ronald Kornblow (Groucho Marx), who, blissfully unaware that he's been hired only because no one else will take the job, immediately takes charge in his own inimitably inept fashion. Corbacchio (Chico Marx), owner of the Yellow Camel company, appoints himself as Kornblow's bodyguard, aided and abetted by Stubel's mute valet Rusty (Harpo Marx). In his efforts to kill Kornblow, Stubel dispatches femme fatale Beatrice Reiner (Lisette Verea) to romance the lecherous manager, leading to a hilarious recreation of a key comedy sequence in the Marxes' earlier A Day at the Races. Arrested on a trumped-up charge, Kornblow, Corbacchio and Rusty escape in time to foil Stubel and his stooges. As in most Marx Brothers epics, A Night in Casablanca includes a tiresome romantic subplot, this time involving disgraced French flyer (Pierre) and his faithful sweetheart Annette (Lois Collier). Though hampered by listless direction and witless one-liners, A Night in Casablanca contains enough hilarity to compensate for its many flaws; some of the best visual gags were conceived by an uncredited Frank Tashlin, including Harpo's legendary "holding up the building" bit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
While the Marx Brothers' 1946 "comeback" film, A Night in Casablanca, is definitely not among their best, it's still worth seeking out. This is especially true for rabid "Marx-ists," who can either uncritically revel in the boys doing their thing once again or critically parse the differences and similarities between Casablanca and such first rate fare as Duck Soup. But even those who enjoy the Brotehrs but wouldn't consider themselves aficionados should find enough in Casablanca to keep them entertained. True, it does get to be heavy going in a few places. There's too much plot in Casablanca, for one thing, which keeps insisting that it make progress, even if periodically means keeping Grouch, Chico and Harpo from having the fun that these three were born to have. The romantic subplot is the usual annoying hooey, and there's no Margaret Dumont, which is a crime. But Groucho can still sling one-liners that thrill with their deadly precision, and Harpo (working with an uncredited Frank Tashlin comes up with some inspired visual gags. The room-to-room seduction scene with Groucho is a winner, and Chico's verbal inanities are as sterling as ever. While it's a shame Casablanca isn't as amazingly loony as the best of the Brothers's films, it helps to fill the time while one is waiting for A Night at the Opera to be rerun. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Jack Sullivan - First Assistant Director, Archie Mayo - Director, Gregg G. Tallas - Editor, Gregg C. Pallas - Editor, Werner Janssen - Composer (Music Score), Bert Kalmar - Songwriter, Harry Ruby - Songwriter, Ted Snyder - Songwriter, Otis Malcolm - Makeup, Duncan Cramer - Production Designer, James Van Trees - Cinematographer, David L. Loew - Producer, Edward Boyle - Set Designer, Frank Webster - Sound/Sound Designer, Roland Kibbee - Screenwriter, Frank Tashlin - Screenwriter, Joseph Fields - Screenwriter
The story takes place in Casablanca after World War II. Following the murder of two managers of a hotel, Ronald Kornblow (Groucho) is hired to replace them. The villain of the movie is Count Pfefferman, also known as Heinrich Stubel (a Nazi) played by Sig Ruman (from A Night at the Opera and A Day At The Races). He wants to become manager of the hotel so he can take control of a number of priceless objects hidden there that were stolen by the Nazis. But his valet (Harpo) accidentally vacuums the toupe off the top of Stubel's head and Stubel can't go out in public because of a conspicuous scar.
Miss Rheiner, as an accomplice of Stubel, is supposed to seduce Groucho. (She: "I'm Beatrice Rheiner, I stop at the hotel." He: "I'm Ronald Kornblow, I stop at nothing.") In several scenes the two of them parody Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, including a scene in which he says "You don't have to sing for me--just whistle." He watches her as she swivels away; then he turns to the camera and says, "That reminds me - I must get my watch fixed."
As in A Day at the Races, Harpo uses charades to tell Chico about the plot to undermine (or kill in this case) Groucho's character.
Before Stubel can make an escape to the airfield with the loot, Kornblow, his friends, and Miss Rheiner invade his hotel room and sneak from suitcase to closet and back again to unpack his bags, and drive him thoroughly nuts. And at the end, Harpo, having knocked out Stubel's pilot in the plane, actually gets the plane off the ground—before plowing it into the police station, where the brothers expose Stubel as an escaped Nazi and chase Miss Rheiner into the distance.
A popular myth (spread in part by Groucho himself) surrounding the movie is that the Marx Brothers were threatened with a lawsuit by Warner Bros. for the use of the word "Casablanca" in the title, it being an infringement on the company's rights to the 1942 film Casablanca. Groucho responded with a letter asserting that he and his siblings had use of the word "brothers" prior to the establishment of Warner Brothers (and many others had before that), and often the story is told that Groucho threatened a counter-suit based on this assertion. He also mentioned that he would consider further legal action by pointing out to Warners that the title of their current hit film Night and Day infringed on the titles of two Marx Brothers films; A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.
The true story is that the original storyline for the film was intended to be a direct parody of Casablanca, with characters having similar sounding names to the characters and actors in the 1942 film. Groucho Marx has said that an early draft named his character "Humphrey Bogus", a reference to the leading actor in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart.[1] Warner Bros. did not actually sue, or even threaten to, but did issue a formal inquiry to the Marx Brothers concerning the plot and script of the film.[2]
The Marx Brothers exploited the situation for publicity, making it appear to the public that a frivolous lawsuit was in the works, and Groucho sent several open letters to Warner Bros. to get newspaper coverage.[2] These letters were among those donated to the Library of Congress by Groucho, and reprinted in his book The Groucho Letters (1967).[3]
In the end, the matter died without legal action, and the storyline of the film was changed to be a send-up on the genre rather than Casablanca specifically.[2] Warner Bros. now owns the distribution rights to this film via Castle Hill Productions.
