On this day 80 years ago, Warner Brothers premiered a film at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City. Originally titled ‘Everybody Comes to Rick’s’, Casablanca had a name change mid-production, but nobody was all that excited about it. It was not, contrary to popular legend, a B picture: it had rising stars, a $1m budget and, in Michael Curtiz, one of Warner’s 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 since the attack on Pearl Harbor the previous winter. It was...