I really shouldn’t make fun of Wake Forest’s zealous safe-guarding of the crazed Demon Deacon symbol. After all, the university apparently will continue to allow me to use the name “Deacon.” And its letter was very professionally worded. I am nonetheless reminded of Groucho Marx’s famous response to Warner Brothers, when it threatened legal action over the title of the Marx’s film, “A Night in Casablanca,” which the studio thought was too similar to “Casablanca.”
Here is Groucho’s classic letter:
“Dear Warner Brothers,
Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.
I just don
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