"Gin joint" of film fame lives on in Casablanca

By Toni Reinhold

CASABLANCA (Reuters Life!) - 1942. The world is at war, and Hollywood does its bit for the Allies with movies like "Casablanca," enabling stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman to immortalize a song, a romance and a gin joint.

2008. A prince sits at a table of Rick's Cafe bathed in amber light and shadows. A former military officer with a dozen guests celebrates a birthday. Piano music wends its way toward arched balconies and Champagne is on ice.

But don't expect Bogie to strut downstairs or Bergman to entreat the pianist to play "As Time Goes By."

"I thought Casablanca was missing a big bet by not having a Rick's," says Kathy Kriger, the 61-year-old former U.S. diplomat who captured the ambience of the film's "Rick's Cafe Americain" and turned a 1930s mansion by the sea into a Casablanca landmark.

"But 95 percent of people in Morocco had never seen the movie or even heard about it," she said.

A couple of taxi drivers had not heard of Rick's Cafe and did not relate to a reference to the movie. But from midday until closing each day, as international a group of patrons as the cast of the movie makes its way to the place.

At a Sunday evening jazz session, there were Moroccans, tourists from America, Europe and Asia, and local and international people bearing business briefcases and laptops.

"Like the movie, the restaurant is becoming secondary, and what happens inside is what everyone gravitates to," says Kriger who -- as Rick did in the film -- lives above the restaurant and oversees everything from greeting guests to each day's menu and wines.