Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Warner Bros, Getty Images and Courtesy of the University of Wyoming
In the beginning, and for many years afterward, Casablanca was just a movie. Those who were associated with the film (especially stars Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Claude Rains) did not live to hear CBS’s 60 Minutes declare in 1981 that Casablanca was “The Greatest Movie Ever Made.” Or that film buffs would celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2023.
For Warner Brothers songwriter M.K. (Moe) Jerome, my grandfather, Casablanca was just another assignment, in some ways a bit of a letdown after working on James Cagney’s Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942, where he had played an important role, writing new songs and helping Cagney to dance like George M. Cohan, the man he was portraying.
There were other projects on Moe’s mind. He was working on “Song of the Bombardiers” for a Randolph Scott film titled Bombardier (1943). The song would become the official theme song of the Air Force’s brave men who sat in the vulnerable spot at the front of the airplane.