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Biography - Tom Barnes

Tom Barnes Author"Tom Barnes was born a “war-baby” on January 5, 1943 in Los Angeles, two weeks before Casablanca went into general release. While growing up in the 1950’s in southern California he became a fan of older movies, especially Casablanca.

After college Tom became a high school social science and history teacher in Orange County California. For 35 years he taught at Whittier High School, Sonora High School in Fullerton, El Toro High School, and Laguna Hills High School. Ten years into his teaching career he started showing Casablanca to his classes. Originally, he developed a 100- question worksheet for his students to fill out as they watched the film. In order to answer many of the questions, they rented the film and re-watched it in groups at home - a regular Casablanca party. Those worksheet questions gave him the idea for the “Casablanca Trivia Game.”

In 1993, Tom developed a board game based on the film. The board game has three different categories of questions at three different levels of difficulty - novice, fan and aficionado. With 1200 questions to choose from, players advance around the board by answering questions correctly.

For the next 12 years Tom’s students played the game - girls against the guys - with the winning team gaining bonus points for their efforts. Students in all kinds of classes played it, including his Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate honors classes, to his “sheltered classes” of students who were learning English as a second language. Over the years “The Casablanca Trivia Game” became a tradition; thousands of students watched the film and played the game in Mr. Barnes’ classes. For 15 years the game has remained in the prototype stage. Due to licensing issues regarding the use likenesses of characters in the film, and the substantial cost to manufacture the game, it has not been put into production. For more information there is a website about the game at casablancagame.com.

After retiring from teaching in 2005, Tom decided to convert much of the game to a book. Using many of the questions from the game, he reorganized the questions into thirty -three chapters that make up Casablanca Film Trivia: Here’s Looking at You, Kid! The book has 30 questions in each chapter with such diverse titles as: “Clothing and Apparel,” “Actors as Refugees,” “Geography,” “Music, Lyrics, and Songs,” “Drinks of Casablanca, “ “Awards, Honors, Fads,” and, of course, “Script and Lines.”

In addition to the questions, he added more than 100 factoids to the book—interesting tidbits of information about all things Casablanca. At 176 pages, the book includes 1130 questions and answers relating to Casablanca. Although there are lots of books and games on movie trivia, Tom is not aware of any other trivia book or game devoted to just one film.

In retirement, besides writing, Tom also tutors high school students in history and the social sciences; and, he and his wife, Vonne have a condominium, the Lighthouse, in Dana Point, California that they rent out as a vacation rental. Tom enjoys reading, playing Rotisserie (fantasy) baseball, and travel. He has been to 87 countries (of course, Casablanca in Morocco is one of them) and 40 states. He and Vonne live in the seaside city of San Clemente, California—a city that claims to have the “best climate in the world”—and are involved in various civic causes. They also endow the Tom Barnes Scholarship that is awarded to deserving seniors at Laguna Hills High School, to help them with their college costs. Their idea of a perfect vacation is to travel to the Caribbean or South Pacific and snorkel for a week.

The Barnes’ have formed Papyrus Publishing to publish and market Casablanca Film Trivia: Here’s Looking at You, Kid! The book can be purchased on their website casablancatrivia.com for $14.95. Tom is an accomplished speaker, published history writer, and a leading authoritiy on Casablanca.

He is available for group presentations and may be contacted at casablancatrivia@cox.net or by calling 1-800 846-1812 or writing:
Papyrus Publishing
P. O. Box 3422
San Clemente, CA 92674-3422

Here’s looking at you, kid!