Casablanca (1955 TV series)

Casablanca was an hour-long American television series that aired on ABC from September 27, 1955, to April 24, 1956, as part of the wheel program *Warner Bros. Presents*. It fell into the spy and intrigue genre, set against the Cold War. Produced by Warner Bros. Television under executive producer William T. Orr, it was the first of 20 filmed shows the studio made for ABC between 1955 and 1963. Among those 20 productions—14 of which were westerns or detective/adventure series—Casablanca was the only one built around a non-U.S.-based Cold War intrigue storyline.

The series drew from the 1940 play *Everybody Comes to Rick's* by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, as well as the famous 1942 film *Casablanca* starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Peter Lorre. Charles McGraw played Rick Blaine, the role Bogart had in the film. After *Kings Row* (which lasted seven episodes), Casablanca was the second-least-successful of Orr’s 20 ABC series, canceled after only ten episodes were made. Director John Peyser blamed the failure on studio head Jack L. Warner’s refusal to hire charismatic rising star Anthony Quinn for the part of Rick, instead settling on McGraw, whom Peyser said “couldn’t act his way out of a hat.”

While hour-long filmed series typically ran 53 or 54 minutes, the first 23 episodes of *Warner Bros. Presents*—which included eight of the ten Casablanca installments—were timed at 48 minutes. This allowed Warner Bros. Television to append six-minute segments hosted by Gig Young, which promoted upcoming Warner films and featured chats with studio-contracted stars.

The 1942 film had been rushed into production after Warner Bros. bought the rights to the unpublished play in January 1942. The studio assigned adaptation to Julius and Philip Epstein, Howard Koch, and uncredited Casey Robinson, with Michael Curtiz directing. Shooting ran from May 25 to August 3, and the New York City premiere was pushed to November to capitalize on newspaper headlines about the Allied capture of North African ports, including Casablanca. Because of that November release, the New York Film Critics considered the film for its 1942 best picture award (won by *In Which We Serve*), but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled that since Casablanca didn’t go national until early 1943, it would compete at the 1944 ceremony.