Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Play it again, Sam

Not quite — the actual line is “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch Credited screenwriters of Casablanca (1942), adapting Burnett & Alison’s 1940 play
The wording is wrong, not the film: the line “Play it again, Sam” is in no scene of the picture. In copyright

Nobody says “Play it again, Sam” in Casablanca. Ilsa Lund says “Play it once, Sam, for old times’ sake,” then “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” Rick’s version, later, is “You played it for her, you can play it for me … Play it!” The popular wording fuses her request with his insistence and adds a word that appears in neither.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Play it again, Sam” Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1942), screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch — "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" Commonly misquoted as "Play it again, Sam," a line that appears nowhere in the film.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Warner Bros. (Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch — Casablanca (1942) · Warner Bros.. Theme: "Play it again, Sam". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Play it again, Sam". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What the script actually says

Film
Casablanca (1942, Warner Bros.)
Screenplay
Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch — a shared credit; no one of the three can be singled out for this line
Spoken by
Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) — a fictional character, not the author
Adapted from
Everybody Comes to Rick’s (1940), an unproduced play by Murray Burnett & Joan Alison

ILSA: Play it once, Sam, for old times’ sake.
SAM: I don’t know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
ILSA: [whispers] Play it, Sam. Play “As Time Goes By.”
SAM: Why, I can’t remember it, Miss Ilsa. I’m a little rusty on it.
ILSA: I’ll hum it for you. Casablanca (1942) · Ilsa & Sam at the piano

Transcribed dialogue per Wikiquote ↗. Note that the word “again” never occurs, and that the request is Ilsa’s. Rick’s separate, later demand runs “You played it for her, you can play it for me!…Play it!”

Wikiquote: Casablanca (film) — dialogue and Misattributed section

How we verified this

  • The film itself settles it. Wikiquote’s Misattributed section ↗ states that while the lines “Play it” and “Play it, Sam” both appear in the film, the line “Play it again, Sam” never appears in the film. Quote Investigator has no entry on this phrase, so Wikiquote’s sourced transcription is the anchor here.
  • The real line is honoured under its real wording. The American Film Institute ranked “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” at No. 28 ↗ of its 100 greatest movie quotations, crediting it to Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) — not to Rick, and not to Bogart.
  • Bogart’s nearest line is a different one. Oxford University Press, writing on the misquotation, gives Rick’s words as “If she can stand it, I can. Play it!” ↗ — the same demand, no “again,” no “Sam.”
  • The scene predates the screenplay; the name does not. The 1940 play Everybody Comes to Rick’s ↗ supplied both the song and the character, but its piano player is called ‘The Rabbit,’ renamed Sam for the film — so “Play it, Sam” as a form of words could not have existed on the page Burnett and Alison wrote.
In copyright

Casablanca premiered in 1942 and was produced and distributed by Warner Bros., well after the 1930 cutoff for the US public domain, so the screenplay remains in copyright. Screen writing is work-for-hire: the rights sit with the studio, not with the Epsteins or Howard Koch. The song “As Time Goes By” (Herman Hupfeld, 1931) is a separate copyright again, and no lyrics are reproduced here.

Fact-check

Three things people get wrong about this line

This is not a case of a stolen quotation — the film is the right film. But almost every element around the sentence is off: the words, the speaker, and how much of it Casablanca invented.

Casablanca (1942) never said

The sentence appears in no scene. Wikiquote’s Misattributed section ↗ puts it flatly: while the lines “Play it” and “Play it, Sam” both appear in the film, the line “Play it again, Sam” never appears in the film.

Humphrey Bogart wrong mouth

The line closest to the misquote is Ilsa Lund’s, not Rick’s — the AFI credits “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” to Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman ↗. Bogart’s nearest equivalent is a different, angrier line: “You played it for her, you can play it for me!…Play it!” ↗. And an actor is never the author of a line in any case.

The screenwriters alone partly borrowed

The moment is older than the movie. Ilsa’s request and the song both come from the 1940 stage play Everybody Comes to Rick’s — Wikipedia notes the inclusion of ‘As Time Goes By’ came from Burnett and Alison’s play ↗. What the film added is the name: in the play the piano player is not Sam but ‘The Rabbit.’ So the two most quoted words of the real line are the screenwriters’ own.

The real line is Ilsa’s, and it is shorter than you remember: “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” ↗

Context

Why the memory beat the movie

The misquote is more efficient than the real thing. Ilsa’s request is spread across a hesitant exchange — she asks once for old times’ sake, Sam plays dumb, she names the song, he claims he’s rusty, she offers to hum it. Rick’s later demand is a separate scene and a different mood: bitter rather than tender. “Play it again, Sam” compresses all of it into four words and hands them to Bogart, who never said them.

The word again is the tell. It does real work that the script deliberately leaves implied: it announces that the song has a history, that this is a repetition. The film conveys the same thing through Sam’s reluctance and Ilsa’s whisper. Popular memory, having no whisper to work with, wrote the subtext into the text.

The word “again” is the subtext of the scene, promoted to dialogue.

What the film actually gives you, in order

Ilsa to Sam: “Play it once, Sam, for old times’ sake.” — then, after he stalls, “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” This is the line the American Film Institute ranked among the great movie quotations.

Rick to Sam, later and angrier: “You played it for her, you can play it for me … If she can stand it, I can. Play it!” This is the closest Bogart comes, and it still contains no “again” and no “Sam” in the imperative.

Neither speech is the popular sentence. The popular sentence is a composite that exists only outside the picture.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Casablanca (film) — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Transcribed dialogue plus a Misattributed section stating that “Play it again, Sam” never appears in the film.
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotesen.wikipedia.org

Ranks the real line — “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” — at No. 28, credited to Ilsa Lund.
Everybody Comes to Rick’sen.wikipedia.org

The 1940 Burnett & Alison play behind the film: source of the song, and where the pianist is ‘The Rabbit’ rather than Sam.
Play It Again Sam — meaning & originwww.phrases.org.uk

Gives both real lines, including Rick’s “You played it for her, you can play it for me!…Play it!”
Misquotation: “Play it again, Sam”oupacademic.tumblr.com

Oxford University Press on the misquote, quoting Ilsa’s line and Rick’s “If she can stand it, I can. Play it!”
Play It Again, Sam (1969 play)en.wikipedia.org

Woody Allen’s Broadway comedy, which took the misquote as its title and gave the error a life of its own.

The author

About Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch

Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein & Howard Koch

Credited screenwriters · Casablanca (1942) · Warner Bros.

The screenplay of Casablanca carries three credited writers — twin brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, who shaped the structure and the film’s celebrated wisecracks, and Howard Koch, who handled the politics. They were adapting an unproduced 1940 stage play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Because the credit is genuinely shared and the picture was rewritten during shooting, no single one of the three can be named as the author of this particular line — and the character Ilsa and the actress Ingrid Bergman are not its authors at all.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Casablanca (1942), screenplay

Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, Casablanca (Warner Bros., 1942), based on the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison (1940). Dialogue as transcribed at Wikiquote ↗.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Play it again, Sam’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/play-it-again-sam

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