Amos--It's true--wonderful stories. Thanks so much for bringing it up again. How did you come across it?




My source for information about the song is a book called Round Up the Usual Supects, by Aljean Harmetz--which I'd recommend to anybody with the slightest interest in Casablanca.

I hope the following information has not already been discussed to death.

What I think is absolutely fascinating about As Time Goes By--so strongly identified with Casablanca, is that Max Steiner, who wrote the score for the movie, never intended to use it at all.

It also appears that its use was due to a haircut.



As noted in another thread, by 1942 it had been forgotten--but it had been a favorite of Murray Bennett, who wrote it into Everybody Comes to Rick's, the play on which the movie was based.    It was written by Herman Hupfeld, who also wrote "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba", among others. After Casablanca was released, Hupfeld tried to get a contract at Warner--no go.

As I said, Max Steiner got the job as composer of the score for Casablanca. He was an amazing guy. Child prodigy. Student of Mahler. Wrote over 300 movie scores, including Gone With the Wind. Steiner only liked to see a movie when the editing was done. When he saw Casablanca in a Warner Bros. projection room, "he decided to dump 'As Time Goes By' and replace it with a theme of his own". He had in fact just finished the score for "Now Voyager" which was to win him the 1942 Oscar.

But Ingrid Bergman had managed to snag the role she was dying to have--in For Whom The Bell Tolls. For that role, she had already cut her hair. So Steiner could not have her sing a Steiner love song but had to take the one already on film---As Time Goes By.

He did more than give in gracefully. He made the song a major character in the movie. As the book says "It functions in the plot. It ushers in the past. And, to some extent, it implies humanity in a world thrown out of kilter."


Dooley Wilson sings the song. He was called Dooley due to having sung a song called "Mr. Dooley" in an earlier show while in whiteface. He was a drummer, not a pianist--the pianist was Elliot Carpenter. Curtiz found Carpenter unsuitable for the role of Sam--book does not say why.

Hal Wallis, producer of Casablanca, had first intended to change Sam to a woman--one of the proposed actresses was Lena Horne. "How or by whom Wallis was talked out of turning Sam into a woman is not recorded".

In May 1942 Warners borrowed Wilson from Paramount for a guaranteed 7 weeks, at $500/wk. Wilson's normal salary was $350/wk. Paramount kept the difference.

As Time Goes By was #1 in the hit parade for 4 weeks in the spring of 1943. Normally Wilson would have recorded the song--and made a lot on it. But "the musicians' union was locked in a long strike with the record companies. So Rudy Vallee's record was rereleased instead".

The book has a lot more information.