157 Quiz Answer

The answer this week is “Casablanca.”  You must remember this: starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, it was one of the all-time favorite motion pictures.

(Also for ABC Wednesday: "G" is for "Grandad")
Here's this week's Berownial quiz. I wrote the following little scenelet, basing it on a very popular motion picture. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is: name the movie.

Because it’s Academy Awards day, I should mention that the film was an Oscar winner for best picture.

 

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Well, you know, some of the other kids talk about what their grandads did during the war.  So I got to thinking about you.  What did you do during the war, Grandad?”

“Ha, that’s a good one.  Talk about great war heroes, I wasn’t one of ‘em.  I ran a café, over in Morocco.”

“You ran a café?  I was sort of hoping you’d have an interesting war story to tell.”

“Well, I do.  At least I think it’s interesting.  Let me tell you about the time I got stood up by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.”

“Doesn’t sound much like a war story.”

“Well, it was.  At least, the war was on when it happened.  I was a young guy in Paris when the Germans marched in.  I was in love with this beautiful blonde girl and we were going to leave together to get away from occupied France. “

“And you got stood up?”

“That’s it.  I waited at the train station for an hour or so.  She never showed.  That was awful.  She was my one true love and I guessed she had just casually run off with some other guy.  I really hated her after that.”

“Certainly a strange war story…”

“Anyway, I wound up a year or so later running this cafe in Morocco.  A great job; I was monarch of all I surveyed.  And – guess what?  She walks in, big as life!  Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine.  She said she had seen the sign ‘Rick’s Cafe Americain’ and wanted to see what it was like.”

“Must have been a bit embarrassing.”

“Not really, because she explained what had happened back in Paris.  You see, she had been married but got news that her husband had died in a concentration camp so she had felt it was okay for us to be together. “

“So you were a couple again?”

“Nope.  She suddenly learned that her husband hadn’t died, which was why she hadn’t been able to meet me at the train station.  So she was very much married, and she stayed married.”

“A love story with a not-so-happy ending.”

“Well, she and her husband went on to devote themselves actively to the anti-Nazi cause, so I feel now that maybe things turned out the right way after all.”

(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings.)