Play it Sam

Herman Hupfeld was born in 1894 in Montclair, New Jersey.  In 1903 his parents sent him to Germany to learn the violin.  He returned in time for WWI, joined the army and scooted around entertaining the troops.  He returned home, never married, and lived in the family home in Montclair and died in 1951.

In the meantime, he wrote music for Broadway musicals.  If a producer needed  a song for a specific scene, and didn’t have Irving Berlin around, he’d call Herman. Until 1931 the most notable song from the pen of Herman Hupfeld was When Yuba. played the Rhumba on his Tuba.  In 1931 producer David Kelsey asked Herman to write a song for a play called Everyone Comes to Rick’s.  In 1942 Hal Wallis made a movie based on the play.

Herman Hupfeld led a humdrum life, but he could go to the cinema and hear Ingrid Bergman say to Dooley Wilson.  “Play it Sam, Play As Time Goes By”  and be comforted by the knowledge that he had written the words and music to one of the great songs.

It almost didn’t happen because of Ingrid Bergman’s haircut.

Max Steiner, who had written the music for Gone With the Wind” had been hired to write the music for Casablanca.   He wanted his own song instead of As Time Goes By.  But it was too late, Bergman had cut her hair short for her role as Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls and they couldn’t reshoot the scene.

Sam, – Dooley Wilson – was a drummer, and couldn’t play the piano.  And as we all know Bergman never said “Play it again, Sam”