Great note from Groucho Marx to Warner Brothers' lawyers, in response to a dunning notice threating him over the Marx Brothers' film, "A Night in Casablanca," which Warner believed would infringe upon its film, "Casablanca."
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.
I just don"t understand your attitude. Even if you plan or releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don"t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.
You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about "Warner Brothers"? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor"s eye, and even before there had been other brothers–the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (This was originally "Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?" but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?")
Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it"s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks–Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk," and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.
(Thanks, Jim!)
