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Probably the best-known fact about Casablanca is that it wasn't the location for the movie - all of which was shot in Hollywood. In fact, Warner Bros, upset by the Marx Brothers filming A Night in Casablanca , attempted to copyright the very name Casablanca - which could have been inconvenient for the city.

The film of course owes its enduring success to Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Sam's songs, but at the time of its release it received a major publicity boost by the appearance of Casablanca and Morocco in the news. As the film was being completed, in November 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch , landing 25,000 troops on the coast north and south of Casablanca, at Kenitra, Mohammedia and Safi. The troops were commanded by General Eisenhower and consisted principally of Americans, whom Roosevelt believed were less likely than the British to be fired on by the Vichy French government in Morocco. An even more fortunate coincidence, however, took place in the week of the film's première in Los Angeles in January 1943. Churchill and Roosevelt had arranged an Allied leaders' summit, and the newsreels revealed its location: the Casablanca Conference , held in a hotel (long since gone) in the affluent suburb of Anfa, out beyond Aïn Diab.

Such events - and the movie - are not, it has to be said, evoked by modern-day Casa. Film buffs with a strong sense of irony, however, might check out Rick's Bar (open from 10pm) in the Hôtel Hyatt Regency on Place des Nations Unies, where the waiters take your (very expensive) drinks orders dressed in trenchcoats and fedoras. And for a glimpse of True Brit Expat life, as it used to be lived, there is always the Churchill Club on Rue Pessac in Aïn Diab. Established in 1922, as the "British Bank Club", its one condition of membership is that "the English language only should be spoken on the premises". One of the social highlights of the week is still the post-church and pre-Sunday lunch drinks.