Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270254
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HUGH A. MULLIGAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CASABLANCA, MOROCCO LENGTH: Long
BOGEY NEVER MADE IT TO CASABLANCA, BUT FDR DID
FIFTY YEARS have gone by and Casablanca is marking the semicentennial of two unrelated events, a historic conference of Allied heads of state that charted the course of World War II, and the release of a movie that put the city on the map but has never been shown on Moroccan TV.
You must remember this: Modern high-rise Casablanca bears scant resemblance to Humphrey Bogart's intrigue-shrouded metropolis of narrow alleys and nefarious cafes.
Bogey's Casablanca rose 50 years ago on the Warner Bros. lot with sets left over from the musical "Desert Song."
Today's real Casablanca is a city of 3.5 million to 5 million people, with palm-shaded boulevards, splashing fountains and flower-carpeted squares.
Welcome to Africa's second-largest city, which this year marks the 50th anniversary of both the film classic "Casablanca" and the historic World War II conference at which President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill adopted the policy of unconditional surrender for Germany and Japan.
That conference opened only eight weeks after American armored and infantry units under Maj. Gen. George S. Patton stormed ashore in Casablanca's treacherous high surf, and in four days of bitter fighting liberated the city from the Vichy French.
Today, Anne Cary, the American consul general, resides in Villa Mirador up on Anfa hill, which was Churchill's headquarters. Her three children do their homework in Churchill's "map room," where British and American generals and admirals planned the invasion of Sicily.
Cary is not sure which was the famous Churchill bedroom where, as Harold Macmillan noted in his dairy, the British prime minister "spent most of the day conducting the war from his bed." His butler, Sawyer, served meals and highballs, while his secretary, Patrick Kinna, took shorthand notes in between lighting his cigars from a candelabrum.
But Churchill was "up most of the night," Macmillan noted, "making it very trying for the staff. He ate and drank enormously, settled huge problems, played bagatelle and bezique by the hour and generally enjoyed himself."
Cary surmises that "the biggest bedroom, which we now use as a guest room, most likely was his. Anyhow, that's where I'd have put him."
Close by is Dar Saada, where Roosevelt resided during the conference and one night entertained Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef at dinner. The sultan brought along his 13-year-old son, who now reigns as King Hassan II.
FDR promised to pursue independence for Morocco, which guide Faz Laticen today tells passengers on his sightseeing bus "was a delayed reward for Morocco being the first country to recognize your United States as a new nation."
The villas occupied by Charles de Gaulle, Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten and Dwight D. Eisenhower remain, but the Hotel Panoramique, where the plenary sessions were held, is long gone.
Casablanca remains the city "of sunshine, oranges and fresh eggs" that Churchill rated as "one of the the best places I have ever struck."
Just a block or two from the luxury hotels and glass-sheathed banks, the old Berber town of Dar el Beida - which, like Casablanca, means the white house - still pulsates with exotic music and the noisy, haggling salesmanship of busy market stalls offering carpets, embroidery, carved wooden stools inlaid with ivory, leather wallets, poufs and babouches (slippers).
For some never-explained reason, the Office of War Information banned the film "Casablanca" in Morocco, but it was shown to the American troops who captured the city. To this day, the movie has never been seen on Moroccan television.
"For the film's 50th anniversary, the U.S.I.S. library had a showing here, and there are several copies floating about town," said Consul Cary.
Facts by the script
Taxi drivers glibly point to any dingy bar as "the original Rick's Cafe Americain," and the penthouse of the Royal Mansour Hotel, or whatever hotel they happen to be passing, as Ingrid Bergman's suite during the filming of the movie.
Their grasp of facts is as fanciful as the scriptwriters for the movie. Just as no German military units occupied Casablanca during the war, and no Gestapo officers like Conrad Veidt's Maj. Heinrich Strasser goose-stepped about town, no one involved in the 1942 filming of Warner's epic got farther from Stage One on the Burbank lot than the airport at Van Nuys, where some shots were taken of the runway.
Shooting on "Casablanca" was completed on Aug. 22, 1942. Jack Warner planned to release the film in late summer of the following year, but a byline story by Wes Gallagher of the Associated Press in the Nov. 8 Los Angeles Times changed his mind. American troops had landed at Casablanca.
To cash in on the headlines, Warner premiered the film at the Hollywood Theater on Thanksgiving Day and ordered a nationwide release on Jan. 25, which brought another dividend. Front pages the next day told of the Roosevelt-Churchill meetings. Ticket sales jumped 50 percent in the following week. Roosevelt already had screened the film at the White House, before departing for the meeting, as had Charles de Gaulle at his London headquarters.
The Allies code name for the conference was "Symbol." Probing the sudden activity on Anfa hill, Spanish spies reported to Berlin that Churchill and Roosevelt were coming to Casablanca, but translating the name from Spanish, German intelligence concluded the meeting would be at the White House. A furious Fuehrer blamed "that fat well-fed pig Goering" for botching a prime target within Luftwaffe range.
Over the years, a number of Rick's bars and Cafe Americains have come and gone. The most popular now is the Bar Casablanca off the lobby of the Hyatt Regency. The waiters are all arrayed in Bogey's snap-brim fedora and trench coat. The bartenders affect the French gendarme's belted uniform and kepi that Claude Rains wore as Capt. Louis Renault. Against a background of "Casablanca" posters and photographic blowups, a Lebanese pianist named Hratch croons "As Time Goes By" in a raspy voice. He obligingly will answer to the name Sam and play it again. And again.
In the Dar el Beida, beggars, pickpockets, snake charmers and fortune tellers work the crowds in the Arab coffee shops and French patisseries. Donkey carts rumble through the narrow, winding streets.
Sitting at low wooden tables beneath the Moorish arches of an ornately tiled building, flanked on both sides by electronic banking machines, marriage counselors listen to the problems of clients who wait in line like penitents at an outdoor confessional. Arranged marriages are a steady sideline.
Everywhere throughout the city, miniskirts and faded jeans are more common feminine attire than face veils, leather masks and the all-enveloping black haik.
"Only 20 percent of the women here wear veils and mostly only on Friday, the Muslim holy day," reports merchant Abou Noussir, whose stall in the Casbah, the native quarter, offers "sexy St. Tropay [sic] bikinis."
This is the same Casbah that a U.S. security officer urged Churchill to avoid lest he pick up some bug that might endanger Roosevelt's frail health. Churchill's reply became instant legend: "Young man, I have no intention of visiting the Casbah. If I had, it would not be for the purpose you had in mind. And if I were to visit the Casbah for that purpose, my relations with the president of the United States are not such that any disgrace so contracted would be passed on to him."
Africa's first McDonald's opened a few weeks ago out on the Corniche, the palm-lined boulevard along the Atlantic where Saudi princes and oil-rich Gulf Arabs have their beach houses and even private brothels. Since Beirut and Iran's casinos up on the Caspian Sea are no longer available for weekend swinging, Casablanca's more liberal lifestyle has made it the new sin city of the desert set.
There are many gourmet restaurants, featuring French, Moroccan, Chinese and Vietnamese specialties. Dozens of discotheques boom out "rai," the combination of rock and folk music imported from Algeria, with song titles like "Hey Mama, Your Daughter Wants Me" and lyrics extolling the pleasures of booze, sex and fast cars.
Along the same golden strand where veiled servants attend bikini-clad sun worshipers at the posh beach clubs rises the Hassan II Mosque, the world's tallest religious structure. Its 575-foot high minaret tops the Great Pyramid at Giza by 125 feet and St. Peter's dome by l3l. Nearing completion, the earthquake-proof mosque, financed by house-to-house solicitations for the king's 60th birthday in 1989, will include a Koranic school, a library, conference rooms, steam baths and a prayer hall with a sliding sun roof that can accommodate 20,000 worshipers, with room for 80,000 more to stretch their prayer rugs in the courtyard.
The king maintains a magnificent palace downtown, and grouped around Place des Nations-Unies are the prefecture or city hall, the Palais de Justice, the post office and the national bank, striking neo-Moorish edifices with mosaic tiled courtyards and wrought-iron balconies designed by French architects.
Like many colonies and protectorates that struggled to free themselves from French rule, Morocco seems reluctant to cast off French culture and cuisine. The affluent in this nation's commercial capital send their children to private schools, then off to university in France. The city map is seamed with Gallic threads: Boulevard Emile Zola, Avenue Pasteur, Place de la Fraternite, Boulevard Bordeaux.
The city comprises many ethnic enclaves - Spanish, English, Italian - each with its own churches, clubs and schools. Jews still reside downtown in Mellah, close to the palace, where they first huddled for royal protection after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.
After World War II, the rural population began migrating to the city, and settled in vast shanty towns, called bidonvilles, where bloody bread riots have erupted several times in recent years. Food seems plentiful but the minimum daily wage is around 75 cents.
With the Persian Gulf War and the recession, American tourism to Casablanca declined sharply.
"Italians, Spanish, French, Germans and English come here mostly now,' says Cary. "Americans are pretty far down the list."