As Time Goes By

Words & Music by Herman Hupfield, 1931
Recorded by Dooley Wilson (as Sam) in "Casablanca," 1942


	Dm7          G7    	 Edim             Fdim
You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss.

C                Dm7     Cdim    Calt 
A sigh is just a sigh; 

     D           Am7  Cdim   G7
The fundamental things ap - ply,

   Dm7   G7  C      Edim   Dm7   G7
As time goes by.


     Dm7            G7    	Edim             Fdim
And when two lovers woo, they still say I love you,

    C             Dm7    Cdim  Calt                     
On that you can rely; 

   D               Am7  Cdim  G7
No matter what the fu - ture brings

    Dm7  G7  C     Fdim  C   C7
As time goes by


F                         A7   Bb7    A7
Moonlight and love songs never out of date,

Dm             Dm+7    Dm7          Cdim
Hearts full of passion jealousy and hate,

Am         Am+7      Am7     Cdim      D
Woman needs man, and man must have his mate,

	Dm7   Edim   G7
That no one can deny.


     Dm7                G7       Edim               Fdim
It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory,

  C   CM7  CM7/6 CM7 Dm7    Cdim   Calt 
A case of   do    or die, 

    D          Am7    G     Cdim  G7      Cdim
The world will always wel - come lovers

   Dm7   G7   C      Fdim    C
As time goes by.

Last Time
	G   Cdim  Dm7  G7  Fdim C    Fdim   C   G   CM7/6
As time                 goes by.



Lyric pal Ron Hontz recently sent me this information:

Upon its initial release in 1931, “As Time Goes By” was a flop but it caught the ear of playwright-to-be Murray Burnett while he was a sophomore at Cornell. In 1940, he and Joan Allison collaborated on a play titled “Everybody Comes To Rick’s” and they chose to use it as the song that Rick and Ilsa had listened to in Paris. Warner Brothers later turned the play into a film that bore the play’s name as its working title. They planned to use the song since they owned the publishing rights to it. Composer Max Steiner, hired to write the film’s score, didn’t like it and wanted to toss it out. He convinced producer Hal Wallis to let him write a replacement but the decision came too late. Director Michael Curtis had finished filming and star Ingrid Bergman had already had her hair cut for her upcoming role in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Wallis decided that the costs of a wig and re-shooting the piano scene weren’t worth it and the song stayed in.

Incidentally, Dooley Wilson could neither sing nor play the piano. The playing was dubbed and they let him sing it anyway in his scratchy tenor. The piano scene became one of the most memorable scenes in the all-time classic, “Casablanca.”

[Taken mostly from “America’s Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs Of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley” by Philip Furia and Michael Lasser.}



 
The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.