Everybody Comes to

In film scholar Noah Isenberg C’89’s engaging investigation of The film’s focus on people caught up in “Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie,” the lives of the émigré actors war trying desperately to make their way to a better life is also freshly relevant who made up most of the cast share the spotlight with the famous given our own era’s controversies over love triangle and wartime call to arms. Their stories also echo the treatment of refugees and immigra- forward to our own era’s debates over the treatment of refugees tion issues generally. “Nearly all of the some seventy-five actors and actresses and immigration policy. By John Prendergast cast in Casablanca were immigrants,” Isenberg writes, noting that the movie’s set was known as “International House.” pleasing but somewhat unnerving feature of The many refugees cast in parts large and small helped give the the talks Noah Isenberg C’89 has been giving film its distinctive, authentic atmosphere, undergirding the iconic to promote his book, We’ll Always Have romance of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman’s Casablanca, is the sensation that the audi- Ilsa Lund and the timely wartime message contained in Rick’s shift Aence’s warm regard for the film has rubbed off on him. “They from disillusioned isolationism (“I stick my neck out for nobody”) shower the same sort of affection on me,” he says, “as if I some- to a renewed commitment to the fight against fascism. how had a hand in making the movie.” This makes him feel a Isenberg opens the book with the story of one minor player— little bit guilty; but also, “I love it.” French-born actress Madeleine Lebeau, who died in 2016, the Subtitled The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most last known survivor among the cast. She played Yvonne, “the Beloved Movie, Isenberg’s book doesn’t lay to rest the question young woman who gets snubbed by Humphrey Bogart in the of why this Hollywood product—among the hundreds released film’s first act,” returns on the arm of a German soldier, and by Warner Brothers and its fellow studios during World War ends by joining passionately in the singing of “La Marseillaise,” II—has meant so much to so many for so long. But it does offer tears streaming down her face as she cries, “Vive la France!” a lively, thorough, and often surprising narrative of how that Lebeau had fled Paris in 1940 and made her way to Hollywood emotional response has played out both here in the United in a months-long journey that recalled the “tortuous, roundabout States and around the world in the 75 years since its debut in refugee trail” described in Casablanca’s opening voiceover. Isenberg November 1942 (just weeks after Allied troops in North Africa quotes an American-born actor, seeing her and others in the scene liberated the real Casablanca). also weeping, as suddenly realizing “they were all real refugees.”

42 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2017 PHOTOGRAPH BY CANDACE DICARLO The number of times Isenberg has seen Casablanca is “deep in the triple digits,” he says. “I enjoy it every time.”

Nov|Dec 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 43 The “Marseillaise” scene—one of the moved to the New School in New York, films (The Man From Planet X, Beyond the film’s most famous and emotionally where he currently directs the screen Time Barrier, The Amazing Transparent affecting—has not lost its resonance. studies program and is professor of cul- Man). And more. Isenberg builds his talks around different ture and media. Much of Ulmer’s work was done for clips from the film. On one occasion last Isenberg is married to Melanie Rehak PRC and similar “poverty row” studios May, the event was running long and he C’93, a writer whose books include Eat- that churned out B-movies “made for was planning to skip that scene—but the ing for Beginners [“A Shelf Full of Reso- next to nothing and very, very quickly” audience wouldn’t let him. It was the day lutions,” Jan|Feb 2011]. They met after to fill the bottom half of double features. after the French presidential election in college when he was writing freelance (The acronym PRC stood for Producers which Emanuel Macron defeated the reviews for The New Republic and she Releasing Corporation but was “some- National Front’s Marine le Pen, and “they was his editor. While Penn didn’t bring times thought to stand for ‘pretty rotten all insisted, you’ve got to play it, you’ve them together, they share an attachment crap,’” says Isenberg.) Ulmer’s extraordi- got to play it!” Isenberg recalls. to the University and Philadelphia now, nary ability to “make stylish pictures” he says, traveling from their home in under these constraints became his “call- Brooklyn for weekend trips and bring- ing card,” but it was also a trap. “He had hough he was born in Los ing their two young sons to Homecom- a lot of work, but he couldn’t break into Angeles, Isenberg doesn’t ing. And Isenberg was a visiting profes- the [major] studios.” come from a film industry sor in Penn’s cinema studies program The director’s more ardent champions family—his mother taught last spring, teaching a course on the have cast him as a “renegade who turned Thigh school English and his father was a “screwball comedy” genre. his nose up at Hollywood,” but Isenberg’s gastroenterologist and professor at UCLA. He’s written about and edited a volume research showed otherwise. He points to The family lived in Santa Monica and La of essays on Weimar cinema, and has letters Ulmer wrote to his wife in the Jolla, and he chose Penn for college after published articles on American and Ger- early 1940s predicting that he would accompanying his father East for a lecture man film subjects in The New Republic, soon be “the big man on the lot—and at the medical school. “I got a chance to The Nation, The New York Review of obviously that didn’t happen,” says tour the campus and just kind of fell in Books, Paris Review, BookForum, LA Isenberg. “So, it was a somewhat tragic love with the place,” he says. Review of Books, and elsewhere. His pre- career trajectory but also a really fasci- A swimmer in high school, he dropped vious book—Edgar G. Ulmer: A Film- nating life story.” out of Penn’s team as a freshman because maker at the Margins, published by the One challenge in telling that story was the double workouts were “just too gruel- University of California Press in 2014— Ulmer’s “penchant for mendacity,” Isenberg ing.” He claims he wasn’t much more was about a figure nearly as obscure as says. “It was very, very hard to try to cor- dedicated academically—at least at first. “I Casablanca is familiar. roborate claims that he made, especially enjoyed everything about [Penn], including Ulmer emigrated from Germany in the late in life.” To ferret out the truest ver- the social life,” he says with a laugh. early 1930s, and was one of several future sion required “two European research That began to change during his junior Hollywood filmmakers who had had a stints, spread out over several years,” and year abroad in Munich. “It was a kind of hand in the influential silent film Men- ultimately stretched the process of fateful experience for me,” he says. “I schen am Sonntag/People on Sunday. His research and writing over the better part came back and was a pretty solid student signature work as a director is 1945’s of a decade. “That was a very twisted in my senior year—I guess better late bleak film noir, Detour (about which Isen- path and one that took a lot of detours, than never—[but] it also really shaped berg wrote a book published in 2008). But a lot of false turns,” he says. me as a person and dictated to a large his prolific oeuvre includes the Edgar It was while working on the Ulmer degree what I would do after Penn.” Allan Poe-meets-German Expressionism book, “and especially researching these After majoring in European history, he horror film The Black Cat with Boris Kar- communities of émigrés from largely gravitated to German studies for his mas- loff and Bela Lugosi, Yiddish-language German-speaking, but also French- ter’s degree (University of Washington) films, the all-black-cast melodrama Moon speaking, Italian-speaking, Middle and PhD (Berkeley), initially focused on Over Harlem, a series of public-service Europe who ended up in Hollywood dur- literature but “segueing, as time passed films for different ethnic groups about ing the rise of fascism,” that Isenberg by, more squarely into film.” He taught tuberculosis, musicals (Jive Junction, Club decided, “that’s really something that I at Wesleyan University from 1995 to Havana, Carnegie Hall), costume dramas wanted to focus on.” 2004, splitting his classes between (Bluebeard, The Wife of Monte Cristo, The At the time he was writing We’ll Always German and film studies, and then Strange Woman), and Cold War era sci-fi Have Casablanca, “I didn’t realize how

44 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2017 powerfully [the refugee theme] would A review in The Aufbau, a German-language resonate,” he says, but soon after the book came out he drew the connection Jewish newspaper read by immigrants, “talked in an essay published in The Daily Beast. about the significance of the story for ‘those of “It’s hard to miss the haunting affinities between World War II and the refugee us who have gone through this,’” says Isenberg. crisis of today,” he wrote. “The number of stateless refugees, especially in the wake of the civil war in Syria and the fallout from Libya, is currently on par the term, I guess, is fan mail,” he says. In both reviews, the critics were em- with the levels reached during the ’40s. “They’re writing to say that they read it, phasizing the element of the film that And the anti-refugee rhetoric of our own and they have questions about this [or spoke most directly to their respective president … matches in many respects that]. Almost on a daily basis I’ll get an audiences, unlike the majority of review- that of the highly vocal isolationist and email saying, ‘I saw the movie when it ers who focused on the film’s stars, love nativist faction in the United States at came out.’” story, or adventure, he says. Isenberg the time of Casablanca’s making.” Despite the compressed writing sched- thinks of Wilson as a kind of refugee as ule and the many previous books about well, as the only African American in the By contrast with his extended labors Casablanca—from production histories picture, “being somehow displaced in over the Ulmer biography, the Casablanca like Aljean Harmetz’s Round Up the Usual Hollywood, and relegated to playing book had a “very hard deadline from the Suspects, originally published in 1992, to these marginal characters, which he get-go,” which was contingent on the the often-at-odds memoirs of various par- shared with these refugees who were also anticipated flurry of interest and activity ticipants—Isenberg nevertheless managed playing these marginal characters.” in advance of the film’s 75th anniversary. to bring new information about the film Besides Wilson and Joy Page (the Winning a National Endowment for to light, as well as updating the story of Bulgarian newlywed whose honor Rick the Humanities’ Public Scholar Award in its “Afterlife” into the 21st century. saves by letting her husband win at rou- 2015-2016 allowed him to take time off One find was in the German-language lette, allowing them to pay for their exit from teaching to write full-time, he says. Jewish newspaper, The Aufbau, which visas), Humphrey Bogart was actually He also values the award as an endorse- was read by newly arrived immigrants, the only American-born actor among the ment of “the whole spirit in which the where he discovered a contemporary 14 credited roles in the film. Some, like Casablanca book is written—namely, to review of the film that highlighted its Ingrid Bergman, who’d come seeking appeal beyond the academy to a much impact on the refugee community. The stardom after success in her native broader public.” The fact that evaluators unnamed reviewer “talked about the sig- Sweden, and British expatriates Sydney saw the book as one that “spoke to the nificance of the story for ‘those of us’—I Greenstreet (rival café owner Signor core tenets of that newly minted grant,” think they did in fact even use the collec- Ferrari) and Claude Rains (Captain he says, “was enormously important.” tive pronoun—‘those of us who have gone Renault, aka Louie), were in Hollywood Isenberg delivered the manuscript in through this,’” says Isenberg. for reasons unrelated to the war. April 2016, and Norton published it in He also unearthed a contemporary But others had sought refuge in the US February 2017, “in time for Valentine’s review in the black-owned New York because they were Jews, or anti-fascist, Day,” he says. Marketers hoped that the Amsterdam News, which singled out or gay and faced possible imprisonment seasonal tie-in would resonate with fans Dooley Wilson’s nuanced portrayal of and death at the hands of the Nazis. of Casablanca’s love story, to be followed Sam, Rick’s companion and the piano- These included the Austrian-born Paul by a second wave of interest as the anni- player at his café. Critic Dan Burley called Henreid (incorruptible Resistance leader versary hit, he says, sounding impressed it “one every colored person should make Victor Laszlo), a staunch anti-Nazi who by their ingenuity. it his business to see since no picture has had been designated an enemy of the The book made the LA Times best- given as much sympathetic treatment Reich, and Conrad Veidt (Major Strasser), seller list last spring—especially satisfy- and prominence to a Negro character as a star in Weimar films, including the Ger- ing for him “as a native Angeleno.” As occurs in this story of war intrigues in man Expressionist classic The Cabinet of hoped, it has also reached an audience North Africa,” with “not the slightest Dr. Caligari, who had left Germany with beyond his peers. “Suddenly I get people semblance to the objectionable Uncle his Jewish wife after Hitler came to I wouldn’t ever have occasion to have Tomming that characterizes most of the power—and found himself playing most- met writing to me and sending these— Hollywood output.” ly Nazis thereafter.

Nov|Dec 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 45 Among the better-known secondary of the most beautiful pieces of dialogue ment to the film’s power to seduce. characters were Peter Lorre and S. Z. in the history of motion pictures.” Pauline Kael called it “a movie that dem- Sakall, who were Hungarian Jews. Lorre Bois, Grüning, and Stössel are examples onstrates how entertaining a bad movie had worked in German films (as the of émigré actors who lived a more pre- can be.” Among more sympathetic child-murderer in Fritz Lang’s M, most carious existence, often going many weeks observers cited by Isenberg, Philadelphia famously) but left in 1933 for England or months between small roles in Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey, on the occa- (he played the villain in the 1935 version Hollywood. In the German typescript of sion of the film’s 50th anniversary in of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too a memoir by another, Lotte Palfi—she has 1992, said it was, if not the best movie Much) and then America. In Casablanca, one line as the lady selling her diamonds ever made, “the best friend among he is indelible in the small but vital role who is told they are “a drug on the mar- American films,” and David Denby, in The of Ugarte, the criminal who murders the ket”—Isenberg found a passage that New Yorker, has deemed it the “most two couriers carrying the “letters of tran- evokes the quiet sadness of their stories. sociable, most companionable movie ever sit” that set the plot in motion, and Palfi and her husband—Paul Andor, yet made.” Isenberg, whose tally of viewings whose capture after begging Rick for another Casablanca bit-player, as the is “deep in the triple digits,” says, “I enjoy help prompts the famous line, “I stick my man carrying Free French pamphlets it every time. It’s really amazing.” neck out for nobody.” who is gunned down beneath the por- Sakall, nicknamed “Cuddles,” played trait of Marshal Pétain—were invited If anything springs eternal in Hollywood, Carl, the head waiter at Rick’s Café. He with other émigré actors to be honored it is the impulse to repeat a successful had been a popular cabaret entertainer at the Berlin Film Festival. She wrote: formula. Isenberg glosses the various and stage and film performer in “Not only was our joy about this honor attempts to fashion a sequel to Casa- Budapest, beginning when it was still immense … but we were even more blanca. During the war, members of the part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. moved by the noble attitude to which the cast and crew were reunited in movies (In 1954, he published an autobiography invitation testified: the desire ‘to make that echoed the story and locale, but only titled The Story of Cuddles: My Life the crooked straight again.’ Of course, one, To Have and Have Not, very loosely Under the Emperor Francis Joseph, Adolf one’s lost career can never be replaced. based on the Hemingway novel, is a Hitler, and the Warner Brothers.) We had to resign ourselves to that long “deeply cherished, widely appreciated Isenberg singles out an encounter that ago. But it feels good realizing that, fifty film in its own right,” he writes. Later Sakall as Carl has with another refugee years after Hitler’s seizure of power, ‘You there were attempts to adapt the film as actor, Curt Bois, the solicitous pickpock- haven’t been forgotten.’” a Broadway musical and a couple of ill- et who warns his unsuspecting victims fated stabs at TV versions, most recently of “vultures, vultures everywhere” as he in 1983 starring David Soul, of 1970s-cop lifts their wallets. When Bois brushes asablanca was a commercial show Starsky and Hutch fame, which was against him, Sakall does a whole-body- hit, and a prestige picture as yanked after three episodes. double-take and starts patting his pock- well, winning Academy But the film itself was a smash success ets frantically. “That’s the ability of a Awards for Best Picture, on television—it was the most frequently great kind of comic mime. There’s no CDirector (Michael Curtiz), and Adapted broadcast film throughout the 1960s and dialogue there; it’s all just gesture.” Screenplay for writers Philip and Julius 1970s, and would continue its dominance Carl is also present for the poignantly Epstein and Howard Koch. Most critics of the airwaves into the cable era, with 125 comic exchange between Herr and Frau praised it, too, but the view wasn’t unan- showings on TCM as of 2015, Isenberg Leuchtag (émigrés Ludwig Stössel and imous. Manny Farber, who titled his writes. (Just so you know: TCM’s website Ilka Grüning), an elderly couple celebrat- review in The New Republic “The Warner lists upcoming broadcasts on Sunday, ing their impending departure for Boys in Africa,” considered it just anoth- November 12, at 3:45 p.m.; Friday, America. Having decided to speak only er of Hollywood’s “epic phonies” and the December 8, at 11:45 a.m.; and Saturday, English in anticipation of their new lives, locale “a timely place to carry on December 16, at 4 p.m., all EST.) they charmingly mangle some common Warner’s favorite cops and robbers.” Revival house screenings—motivated endearments (“Liebchen—uh, sweetness James Agee, writing in The Nation, called by the “Bogie cult” that emerged follow- heart”) and idioms involving time (“What it “the year’s clearest measure of how ing the actor’s death in 1957—also kept watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?”). willingly, faute de mieux, people will the film in front of live audiences, espe- Isenberg notes that Rainer Maria deceive themselves.” cially college students. At Cambridge’s Fassbinder, “the late bad boy of New But most critical naysayers have Brattle Theater near Harvard Square, German Cinema,” described this as “one offered at least a backhanded compli- going to see Casablanca during exams in

46 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2017 Dissenting critic Manny Farber considered the by Tim Cockey in The Boston Globe reporting on a talk at which lines like film just another of Hollywood’s “epic phonies” “Round up the usual suspects” and “a and the locale “a timely place to carry on kiss is just a kiss” were met mostly with blank stares. “Why should I be shocked, Warner’s favorite cops and robbers.” shocked that not everyone I encounter can identify the cultural genesis of ‘shocked, shocked’?” Cockey wrote. But Isenberg is quick to counter that argu- ment with our era’s ultimate arbiter: the winter and spring became a popular writes. It wasn’t well received, but after internet. “The stubborn truth remains, ritual. Isenberg quotes the theater’s pro- the uncut version showed in revival and on social media,” he writes, “there is no grammer that being there when on TV in the 1970s, it “became something shortage of references to the film, the Casablanca was playing “was, in a small of a cult film.” Isenberg also reports that evocative stills and poster art, and to the way, like being at a theater in ancient in Hungary, starting in the 1960s and up iconic lines of dialogue.” (And do the kids Greece watching Oedipus.” through the 1980s, Casablanca was today still get that meaning of Bogart?) The film’s “unsullied patriotism” was shown every Christmas Day on the one inspiring to young people opposed to channel broadcasting and “viewing the the Vietnam War, Isenberg writes. film became an annual ritual for many ill Casablanca retain its hold “Young moviegoers of the 1960s and of its citizens.” on the culture? Isenberg 1970s found in the film what was absent When Isenberg shows the film in his W thinks so. in their world.” He quotes one political classes at the New School, he informs “People ask me all the time, ‘So why is activist as saying, “Casablanca is the first-time viewers, “You will now rec- it that it has the legs that it has? Why is kind of film that makes a radical feel ognize lines that you have heard again it that the staying power is as great as it he’s part of the mainstream.” and again.” is?’” he says. “I can point to a number of But you didn’t have to be a college kid The subject of countless cultural refer- historical factors, but there are certain to take an obsessive interest in the film. ences over the decades, it’s been mined things that elude definition. Among the super-fans who make an for comedy starting with the Marx “We academics want to have everything appearance in Isenberg’s tale is Erroll Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca in 1946 in our taxonomies, but there are certain Parker, a self-described “African Ameri- (admittedly far from their best work). things that are beyond classification, and can (and former Black Panther)” who More successfully, Woody Allen paro- Casablanca may be, on some level.” first saw the film when he was 14 years died the movie and the Bogie cult in the As the 75th anniversary milestone old and stuck in bed with a broken leg hit play and film, Play It Again, Sam. looms, Isenberg is continuing to give and would go on watch it more than 600 Other examples include Bugs Bunny talks about the book and film—he’ll be times as of 1999. (Carrotblanca), The Simpsons, and in Philadelphia November 15, and two No word on whether Massachusetts Saturday Night Live, most recently in a days later will travel to Casablanca itself Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren 2015 skit in which Kate McKinnon’s Ilsa at the invitation of the US Embassy to ever took in a show at the Brattle in her grows increasingly impatient to get on celebrate the film and mark 240 years of years as a professor at Harvard Law, but that plane while Rick just … keeps … US-Moroccan diplomatic relations. The Isenberg quotes from a December 31, talking. As recently as this past summer, paperback edition will be published early 2015, Facebook post by Warren about her a New Yorker cartoon drew on it to com- in 2018, and he has a number of projects and her husband Bruce’s New Year’s Eve ment on the US withdrawal from the in the works—he mentions he’d like to plans: “lots of good cheeses, champagne, Paris climate accord: President Trump put together a translation of writer-direc- and Casablanca.” in a trenchcoat tells a stand-in for Ilsa, tor Billy Wilder’s journalistic writings in The first version of Casablanca to be “We’ll always have Pittsburgh” (refer- German. “But I don’t have another full- shown in Germany (in 1952) cut out all encing his statement at the time about scale book,” he says. “When people ask mention of Nazis and turned Victor representing that city rather than Paris). that question, I’m like, ‘I’m just trying to Laszlo into “Victor Larsen, a Norwegian Isenberg does gives space to one skeptic ride this wave as long as I can.’” atomic physicist hunted by Interpol,” in concerning Casablanca’s cultural cur- Which, given Casablanca’s past history, deference to the “delicate, half-hearted rency, quoting an August 2015 column, could be a while. process of de-Nazification,” Isenberg “Don’t Bogart Those Cultural Touchstones”

Nov|Dec 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 47