As Time Goes By

Herman Hupfield wrote “As Time Goes By” in 1931 for the Broadway musical Everybody’s Welcome, but the song never really got the attention it deserved until it was featured in the 1942 Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman film, Casablanca. I was surprised to read that the original lyrics (omitted in the movie) referred to Einstein’s theory of relativity. I guess for some reason I’d assumed that E=mc2 came after the theoretical physicist’s emigration to the U.S. in 1933. As it happens, he first published his theory of special relativity in 1905. (When I make stupid mistakes like this, I like to blame an indifferent public school education. But the indifference was probably on my part.) “As Time Goes By” made number 2 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years/100 Songs list. Number 1 was of course Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz.