On this day, 80 years ago, Warner Brothers premiered a film at the Hollywood Theater in New York City. Originally titled Everybody Comes to Rick’s, Casablanca had a name change mid-production, but no one was all that excited about it. It was not, contrary to popular legend, a B picture: it had rising stars, a $1million budget and, in Michael Curtiz, one of Warners’ most successful directors. But on the face of it, Casablanca seemed like just one more of the pro-war, anti-Nazi propaganda films Hollywood had been pumping out like hot cakes since the attack on Pearl Harbor the...