Memories Of
Rick-With Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” In Mind
By Seth Garth
[Before he passed away in
the late 1980s the long time French police officer, Commandant Louis Renault
(everybody, everybody but the bad guys who crossed his path and there were
plenty and not all of them Germans, called him “Louie” for his mild-mannered
easy style when he was not in hot pursuit of some nefarious types)who had
worked both in colonial Algeria and French Morocco before heading back home to
work with the National Police in his hometown of Lyon, liked to sit in the Café
Algiers there and reminisce about all his adventures as a cop. When asked about
the most memorable person, friend or foe, he had been up against in his times
he would without much hesitation blurt out the name of Rick Blaine.
Rick of Rick’s Café in
Casablanca when Louie had worked in French Morocco early in World War II after
the fall of the French Republic and the rise of the Vichy government which
controlled that colony then. He as a police officer noted the changing of the
guard and went about his business as usual-regimes come and go he had always
said but the cops are forever. After investigation of Rick’s past, most of the
early part as a tough guy out of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City a place where
Rick would make people laugh when he said even the mighty Germans would think
twice about occupying and had included some troubling adventurous activity for
the “wrong” side in Ethiopia and Spain during the 1930s, he, after having had his
palm “greased” issued the liquor and nightclub license for Rick to keep his
Cafe Americian open under his prefecture.
For most of the time he
knew Rick in Casablanca they had had a good working relationship. Rick would
let him “win” at the roulette wheel as his pay-off for letting illegal gambling
go on in full sight, “comp” him for drinks and dope, mostly hashish, and let
him have his women “rejects” on the rebound. Then she came in, came in as Rick
said one drunken night when she had her claws in him bad again “of all the gin
joints in all the world she had to show up at his door.” From then on things
got interesting, very interesting. The following is a translation by Jean
Marais of what Louie had to say when he was asked by a National Police archivist
for details of his relationship with one Rick Blaine (1920-1982)-SG]
“That Rick Blaine was a
piece of work, one of the last of the pre-war, pre-World War II if anybody is
asking which war we are talking about, romantics tilting his lance at the
windmills in the name of love-or the thrill of adventure, maybe even the thrill
of tweaking somebody’s nose just for the hell of it, Louie Renault was
reminiscing out loud to those who were attending his retirement party.
Retirement from the National Police, [the French coppers although they are not national
cops like the FBI in America but just like city and town cops there run through
the central government], the guys who keep order in places like Paris and Lyon (since
it was a governmental pension he was about to receive after much haggling his
service during Vichy times first in Algiers and then in French-controlled
Morocco, in Casablanca, was included as well as his Lyon assignments). He had
been asked a question by one of the younger policer officers about what was his
most memorable episode in a long and illustrious career. Of course Louie had to
go back to those early war days when he ran the operation for Vichy in
godforsaken Casablanca to find some events, some characters who could qualify
for what that young officer was asking about. Had to go back to Rick Blaine
without question.
“Yes, Rick was the real
thing, I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned his name,” Louie blurted out when the
officer did not comprehend why a guy whom he had on other occasions called nothing
but a saloon keeper, a guy out for himself whatever checkered past he might
have had rated so high. “Let me fill you and see if I am not right about this
whole matter.” He would say out of earshot that even De Gaulle would gladly
take a back seat after hearing this story since he was safely in London being a
pain in the ass to the British and American while “little guys” like Rick and a
guy who looked pretty big even by De Gaulle standards Victor Lazlo were
mercilessly tweaking the German’s tail.
“Once the Germans marched
into Paris they controlled the whole political situation but since they
couldn’t handle a total occupation of France and wreak havoc on the rest of
Europe at the same time they left part of the country to the French military,
to General Petain who worked out of Vichy, the place where the specialized
water comes from. Yeah, collaborators, liked they used to try to hang on me
before Rick came to Casablanca, Lazlo too, and got everybody well. I had been
in Algiers during that time but once the new political reality hit I was
assigned to run the police operations in bloody Casablanca-a backwater where
every odd-ball thing could and did happen as well as plenty of illegal stuff
from dope to women to smuggling. Just my cup of tea. I figured that I could
make more graft there in the Casbah than staying in Algiers once the British and
Americans got serious about dislodging the Germans from Northern Africa.
“No sooner had I landed in
Casablanca then I spied Rick’s place, Rick’s Café Americian he called it, a
place where there was plenty of booze, women, gambling, dope and whatever else
you wanted. Or wanted done-life was cheap there-dirt cheap. The bloody Arabs
could barely keep themselves busy except when some silly “blood honor” thing
came up and we had to pick up the mess after the killings. Some he said, the
other guy said stuff and then bang-bang. Had to arrest about fifteen people,
family members from both sides and show them a little baton to the head just to
let them know we meant business. Nobody ever faulted me on that score. I walked
in and introduced myself to Rick without saying anything further. He looked at
me with a twinkle in his eye he said later after all the smoke had cleared and
we could be honest with each other, sized me up and down and knowing that I
would do “business” after that appraisal said would the previous arrangement
with the Prefect I was replacing be okay- a cut of the profits, a slice of the
gambling [paid out by his “winning at roulette” with lucky red 22], my pick of
women, free liquor and dope, and deep discounts on anything else I needed. Also
told me of his dealings, his working relationships for dope, booze and Moslem
women which it seemed some of the Europeans were crazy for although I was
strictly for the low-rent French tarts who found Casablanca easy on their
virtue, with Sydney Greenstreet, an émigré merchant of sorts from England over
in the Casbah. I immediately issued the necessary licenses that each new Prefect
was entitled to issue as was my prerogative. Done.
“This Rick was a hard guy
to figure though the more I ran into him on the street or more regularly in his
place either to grab some young woman, to grab my cut, to “win” at roulette, or
just to have some high shelf bonded whiskey that I became very fond of. Somebody
said, I think it was Frenchie the main bartender, that Rick had had some kind
of an adventurous past, had run some guns to Ethiopia when they were trying to
hold off the Italians when Mussolini was flexing his muscles and later fought
with the International Brigades, with the Communists in Spain when Franco was
working up to flexing his muscles. I had already known that past from the files
the previous Prefect had left and from a couple of snitches I had run through
Rick’s place but the “grease” from Rick’s deal said otherwise in my eyes. When I first met him he was all business
like I said, if you said green he said okay what shade, that kind of thing.
“Somebody said, maybe it
was Frenchie again since I sat at the bar of the joint many a night to
“enforce” the no gambling regulation and to drink a few high shelf scotches,
that Rick had been unlucky in love and that was why when he, Rick, had his choice of any girl he wanted, two if
he was feeling frisky, would take them up to his office and apartment upstairs
from the club, do whatever it was that they did, some wild stuff I heard from a
couple of them that I caught on the “rebound” especially from one who took him
“around the world” which she would later do with me and the next night would
not know them. Tell them to sell their wares in the Casbah, a low thing to say
to a European woman if you knew anything at all about what went on in the
Casbah. I never went there personally but would sent for this Greenstreet to
deliver me my graft and whatever dope I was looking for at the time. Like I
said mainly hashish from the pipe. In the end it would be that lost love that
had been bothering Rick once she came to town but early on you couldn’t tell what
was eating at him. Just knew that he had a chip on his shoulder which would not
fall off.
“Jesus, in those days there
were all kinds of people as you can imagine trying to get out of Europe for one
reason or another and once France and the countries around it fell to the
Germans that was doubled up. Homeless, stateless Jews, who we all knew were
being savaged by the Germans and by Vichy too, International Brigaders who
couldn’t go back to their occupied homelands, local Communists who didn’t get
or who couldn’t get underground, anybody out of the ordinary, we even had a
couple of kids, rich kids who had left Hamburg once Hitler said that jazz was a
Negro-Jew conspiracy and banned the music. If you looked at a map of Europe in
say 1941 you would notice that there was not much wiggle room to work with in
order to get out of some occupied spot. The road out though however they got
there led to Casablanca no matter what the individual reason for leaving Europe
was. The link. The air flights to Lisbon and from there anyplace but the old
canard Europe.
“So you know that there was
plenty of money to be made by those daring enough to act as smugglers to get
these desperate people out one way or another. I could have made plenty if I
had decided to use my position to get real greedy but I didn’t want to deal
with a bunch of desperate people bothering me about why they weren’t getting
out fast enough. Rick and the Casbah made me plenty-for a while. All the action
either went through that guy Sidney Greenstreet who ran his operation out of
the Casbah where he mainly handled small fry, people of no account but with
money, or at Rick’s for the higher class clientele. Mostly the wealthier Jews
and previously high placed officials of democratic governments who the Germans
were desperate to find and make an example out off for their compatriots under
occupation. Some seriously shady characters, art forgers, crazed jazz
aficionados, con artists, three card monte hustlers, independent dope
dealers-mainly heroin out of the Afghan fields working their way West to the
cities, jack-rollers, rapists and assorted slugs, characters who even we had to
keep an eye on to keep any kind of order plopped themselves there.
“Things though were going
fine until some horse’s asses, as it turned out guys we had on our radar but
couldn’t quite nab, decided they would murder a couple of German couriers and
grab a couple of letters of transit they were travelling with. Now these
letters of transit were like gold-would make their possessor a pot of gold. Maybe
two pots if they worked it right. These were no questions asked documents which
only had to have names filled in order to catch a flight to Lisbon and from
there wherever else they wanted to go. This weasel, well known to us from a couple
of rip-off jobs he did on unsuspecting travelers, a guy named Peter Lorre was
part of the gang who took the couriers down. One night he showed up at Rick’s the
natural place to start looking for high-end buyers and we nailed him-took him
in “custody” but he didn’t have the letters of transit on him. He hanged
himself in his cell before we could get much more out of him. Rick had been as
cool as a cucumber when this weasel, this sweaty little nobody showed his ugly
face there. This Lorre begged Rick to hide him. Rick just blew him off, told
him to get lost. A couple of customers made noises when we grabbed and
manhandled Lorre saying they wouldn’t patronize Rick’s again because of his
attitude in the matter. Rick told them something that impressed me at the
time-he wasn’t sticking his neck out for anybody. Those customers by the way
were back the next night when I let Rick reopen the place and he sent them over
a couple of drinks. They were his best buddies then.
“That courier murder
business though would lay us all low. See the Germans had sent over this
hard-ass major, Major Veidt (sic) I think his name was if I remember the name
correctly, to look into the matter. I was trying to impress him so he would put
in a good word for me with Vichy. That was the whole idea behind making a big
deal out of the Lorre arrest (and I was happy when he hung himself because he
would have not stood up well under German methods and he might have spilled who
knows what about what was going on in Casablanca at the time). That made Rick’s
gesture at the time this guy Lorre begged him to save him from my men even more
important. Rick just looked the other way and Lorre was a goner. We never did
get the other guys in with Lorre when we rounded up, our what did we call them,
oh yes, “usual suspects”, Communists and
con men and a few whores who we regularly rounded up to fill the jails full and
make it look like we were doing our jobs. Some wound up out in a desert
graveyard once we were done with them.
“Like I said in those days
all kinds of people were coming through town. One of them a guy I mentioned
before and said I would speak of again named Victor Lazlo had escaped from a
German concentration camp and somehow he had worked his way through whatever
network he had in Europe to Casablanca. This Lazlo was well-known as a leader
of the resistance to the German occupations of half of Europe so a guy whom the
Germans, especially this Major Veidt, were foaming at the mouth to get their
hands on. But as long as he didn’t do anything illegal I had no reason to
arrest him. I had half-figured when I heard he was in town to see who the
highest bidder, strictly cash, was for his hide and take my cut that way.
“But here is where things
got interesting. This Lazlo, a good-looking guy with good manners and a good
tipper according to Frenchie, was not travelling alone. He had this beautiful
woman with him, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen then or now, Ilsa
something, I am not sure we ever knew her last name and it didn’t matter with a
beauty like that. When she showed up our Rick went crazy, went crazy like a
loon. See he had come to Casablanca just ahead of the German armies advancing
on Paris with this black guy who was an entertainer, a singer and piano player named
Sam and a sour look on his face. He had “known” Ilsa in Paris, had been her
fancy man from what I could tell. They were supposed to blow town together and
meet at the train station one evening on the last train out of Paris before the
Germans stopped the trains. She was a “no show.” She was in living color the
reason that Rick had been so indifferent to everything. Why he turned over
perfectly good women to me without batting an eyelash.
“Of course the minute she
showed up the old flames were re-kindled-for both of them. She had spied Sam at
the piano through the heavily smoke-filled room, had forced him to play “their”
song, If I Didn’t Care I think and
when Rick heard that he went ballistic, was ready to come to blows with Sam
since Sam had been ordered never to play the song. Then he spotted her across
the piano and he melted down like an ice cube. It seems that in Paris she had
assumed her husband, this Lazlo was dead, had been killed by the Germans. False
report. That last day in Paris she found out through some underground source
that Lazlo was still alive and she had gone to him. Leaving Rick standing in
the rain at the fucking train station. Naturally all of this stuff I learned
later but that “left standing in the rain” is what drove Rick to get up on his
high horse and create nothing but trouble for me and my men once she came into
view.
“That long gone Lorre had
given Rick the letters of transit to keep for him the night Rick looked the
other way when we grabbed the weasel and made him squeal or whatever weasels do
when they are caught. When with Rick’s help he fell down, wound up at the end
of his checkered tie, Rick figured that he would use the letters to get himself
out of hellhole Casablanca. He said that even Hell’s Kitchen in New York where
he had grown up (and had “advised” the Germans to think twice about trying to
occupy if you recall) was less dangerous than Casablanca so you get an idea how
bad things were-how cheap life was on in the desert. Worse than the bloody wogs
the British were always moaning about in the Raj, in India. He wasn’t going
alone though. She, Ilsa, was going with him. She had snuck up into his
apartment one night when Lazlo was out doing his organizing of the local
resistance. As a result of that outlawed meeting I had Lazlo picked up when he
surfaced, you couldn’t have such meetings and I knew that German major would be
happy to hear that I had the great Victor Lazlo locked up like a caged animal.
“Whatever Rick and Ilsa did
and from what Frenchie said Oscar the head waiter told him they had definitely
gone under the sheets from his disheveled look and the blush on her face when
Rick told Oscar to escort her home they were blowing town together. When Oscar
told me that story a few days later I wondered about what had happened. What
had made sour Rick decide to blow a good thing in Casablanca (my good thing too
don’t forget). No question Ilsa was a beauty, an exceptional beauty but after
the way she had left him high and dry in Paris I figured maybe a quick roll in
the hay and then off alone. But you never know about beautiful women, sometimes
they can be just as kinky as any whore or any low-rent tart. She didn’t look
that way but maybe with a few drinks and an agenda of her own-like getting
Lazlo out- alone- she took him around the world like that ex-flame Lisette
had.
“Somehow and I never could
get him to tell me exactly what happened he had had an epiphany after that
night some kind of turnaround. All he would say back then was the way the world
was just then the troubles of three people, him, Ilsa and Lazlo weren’t worth a
hill of beans compared what was going on. But whatever the source from then on
he was on fire, was maybe thinking back to that old fight in Spain, thought
about some payback for lost comrades, maybe what would happen if the Germans
won, maybe he just didn’t like that Major Veidt and his arrogant ways closing
up his café when the high rollers were coming in for their weekend beatings.
“So he gave Ilsa one story
about how they should meet at the airport and blow town. She was all over that
idea and had dropped any mention of Lazlo. He told me another. Talked me into a
deal that when I thought about it later I should have figured was bullshit from
minute number one. Confessed to me that he had the letters. Was blowing town
with Ilsa and that was that. He said -let’s do this though. Let Lazlo out, let
him get to the airport with the letters and grab him as an accessory for the
courier murders. A feather in my cap was all I could think of. Would get that
fucking Major Veidt off my back about picking up Lazlo and showing him the
desert sights. When the deal went down though Rick was faking the whole thing.
Maybe not about wanting to flee with Ilsa but about his attitude toward Lazlo.
He had convinced me of his plan but when the deal went down I was the fall guy,
well, one of the fall guys. That German major took the big fall when he tried
to stop the plane to Lisbon as Lazlo and Ilsa got on the plane. Rick took him
down without a murmur in one clean shot making me wonder how the Loyalists lost
in Spain with a guy like that working with them.
“Needless to say when I was
caught in a bind I stepped away from danger by refusing to arrest Rick. I went
into the usual dodge-round up the usual suspects, double it up this time since
a goddam German major was under the ground. I resolved the bind I was in pretty
simply. I figured my days in Morocco were finished and so I saw the writing on
the wall. I walked away with Rick (an action that I was successfully able to
use in order to have my service time there count toward my retirement which I
had many hassles over before I won). We made our way to Brazzaville with the
dough Rick grabbed from Greenstreet when Rick sold him his interest in the café.
I stayed there grabbing my graft until the end of the war and had worked various
grifts with Rick until he went back to Europe a few months later where he
joined up with the French resistance, worked with Samuel Beckett the exiled
Irish playwright who was deeply into the organization from what I heard later.
I heard from him a few times over the years before he passed away a few years
ago. I guess Casablanca was in his blood because after the war he ran the Café Casablanca
in New York City for some thirty years before he gave it up to retire. But what
a guy that Rick was, giving up that luscious piece for unsung glory underground
in France. Making that big gesture for love. Yeah, the last of the pre-war
romantics.
