Arsenic and Old Lace (film)

For other uses, see Arsenic and Old Lace (disambiguation).

Arsenic and Old Lace
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Frank Capra
Screenplay by	Julius J. Epstein Philip G. Epstein
Based on	Arsenic and Old Lace 1941 play by Joseph Kesselring
Produced by	Frank Capra Jack L. Warner
Starring	Cary Grant Raymond Massey Peter Lorre Priscilla Lane Jack Carson
Cinematography	Sol Polito
Edited by	Daniel Mandell
Music by	Max Steiner
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	September 1, 1944 (1944-09-01) (New York City) September 23, 1944 (1944-09-23) (US)
Running time	118 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,164,000
Box office	$4,784,000

Arsenic and Old Lace is a 1944 American black comedy film directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant. It was based on Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play, Arsenic and Old Lace. The script adaptation was written by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. The contract with the play’s producers stipulated that the film would not be released until the Broadway run ended. The original planned release date was September 30, 1942. The play was a tremendous hit, running for three and a half years, so the film was not released until 1944. The lead role of Mortimer Brewster was originally intended for Bob Hope, but he could not be released from his contract with Paramount Pictures. Capra had also approached Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan before learning that Grant would accept the role. On the Broadway stage, Boris Karloff played Jonathan Brewster, who is said to "look like Boris Karloff". According to TCM, Karloff, who gave permission for the use of his name in the film, remained in the play to appease the producers, who were afraid of what stripping the play of all its primary cast would do to ticket sales. Raymond Massey took Karloff’s place on screen. The film's supporting cast also features Priscilla Lane, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton, and Peter Lorre.

Josephine Hull and Jean Adair portray the Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha, respectively. Hull and Adair, as well as John Alexander (who played Teddy Brewster), were reprising their roles from the 1941 stage production. Hull and Adair both received an eight-week leave of absence from the stage production, which was still running, but Karloff did not, as he was an investor in the stage production and its main draw. The entire film was shot within those eight weeks. The film cost just over $1.2 million of a $2 million budget to produce.

Plot

The Brewster family of Brooklyn, New York, is descended from Mayflower settlers. Several illustrious forebears' portraits line the walls of the ancestral home.

Jean Adair, Josephine Hull and Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace

Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), a writer who has repeatedly denounced marriage as "an old-fashioned superstition", falls in love with Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), the minister's daughter who grew up next door to him. On Halloween day, Mortimer and Elaine get married. Elaine goes to her father's house to tell her father and pack for the honeymoon and Mortimer returns to Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair), the aunts who raised him in the old family home. Mortimer's brother, Teddy (John Alexander), who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt, resides with them. Each time Teddy goes upstairs, he yells "Charge!" and takes the stairs at a run, imitating Roosevelt's famous charge up San Juan Hill.

Searching for the notes for his next book, Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in the window seat. He assumes in horror that Teddy's delusions have led him to murder. Abby and Martha cheerfully explain that they are responsible, that as serial murderers, they minister to lonely old bachelors by ending their "suffering". They post a "Room for Rent" sign to attract a victim, then serve a glass of elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch of cyanide" while getting acquainted. The bodies are buried in the basement by Teddy, who believes they are yellow fever victims who perished in the building of the Panama Canal.

While Mortimer digests this information, his brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) arrives with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre). Jonathan is also a serial murderer trying to escape from the police and dispose of his latest victim, Mr. Spinalzo. Jonathan's face, altered by Einstein while drunk, resembles Boris Karloff's Frankenstein monster makeup. Jonathan learns his aunts' secret and proposes to bury his victim in the cellar. Abby and Martha object vehemently because their victims were "nice" gentlemen while Jonathan's victim is a stranger and a "foreigner". Jonathan also declares his intention to kill Mortimer.

Elaine is impatient to leave on their honeymoon but is concerned about Mortimer's increasingly odd behavior as he frantically attempts to control the situation. He tries unsuccessfully to alert the bumbling police to Jonathan's presence. To draw attention away from his aunts and deprive them of their willing but uncomprehending accomplice, Mortimer tries to file paperwork to have Teddy legally committed to a mental asylum. Worrying that the genetic predisposition for mental illness resides within him ("Insanity runs in my family; it practically gallops"), Mortimer explains to Elaine that he can't remain married to her.

Eventually Jonathan is arrested, Einstein flees after having signed Teddy's commitment papers, Teddy is safely consigned to an institution, and his aunts insist upon joining him. Upon hearing that Mortimer signed the commitment papers as next of kin, Abby and Martha are concerned they may be null and void; they inform Mortimer that he is not a Brewster after all: his mother was the family cook and his father had been a chef on a steamship. Relieved, he lustily kisses Elaine and whisks her off to their honeymoon while yelling, "Charge!".

Reviews

The contemporary critical reviews were uniformly positive. The New York Times critic summed up the majority view, "As a whole, Arsenic and Old Lace, the Warner picture which came to the Strand yesterday, is good macabre fun." Variety declared, "Capra's production, not elaborate, captures the color and spirit of the play, while the able writing team of Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein has turned in a very workable, tightly-compressed script. Capra's own intelligent direction rounds out." Harrison's Reports wrote: "An hilarious entertainment, it should turn out to be one of the year's top box-office attractions." John Lardner of The New Yorker called the film "practically as funny in picture form as it did on the stage, and that is very funny indeed."

Twenty-four years after the film was released, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg wrote Hollywood in the Forties where they state that "Frank Capra provided a rather overstated and strained version of Arsenic and Old Lace".

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #30

Box office

According to Warner Bros records, the film earned $2,836,000 domestically and $1,948,000 foreign.

Commentary

The play was written by Joseph Kesselring, son of German immigrants and a former professor at Bethel College, a pacifist Mennonite college. It was written in the antiwar atmosphere of the late 1930s. Capra scholar Matthew C. Gunter argues that the deep theme of the play and film is the conflict in American history between the liberty to do anything (which the Brewsters demand), and America's bloody hidden past.

Cast

• Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster
• Josephine Hull as Aunt Abby Brewster
• Jean Adair as Aunt Martha Brewster
• Raymond Massey as Jonathan Brewster
• Peter Lorre as Dr. Herman Einstein
• Priscilla Lane as Elaine Harper Brewster
• John Alexander as "Teddy Roosevelt" Brewster
• Jack Carson as Officer Patrick O'Hara
• John Ridgely as Officer Sanders
• Edward McNamara as Police Sgt. Brophy
• James Gleason as Police Lt. Rooney
• Edward Everett Horton as Mr. Witherspoon
• Grant Mitchell as Reverend Harper
• Vaughan Glaser as Judge Cullman
• Chester Clute as Dr. Gilchrist
• Edward McWade as Mr. Gibbs - the old man
• Garry Owen as Taxicab Driver
• Charles Lane as first reporter
• Hank Mann as Second reporter with camera
• Spencer Charters as Marriage License Clerk

Radio adaptations

Arsenic and Old Lace was adapted as a half-hour radio play for the November 25, 1946, broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater with Boris Karloff and Eddie Albert. A one-hour adaptation was broadcast on January 25, 1948 on the Ford Theatre, with Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, and John Alexander reprising their roles.

See also

• New York Times Review of Arsenic and Old Lace, September 2, 1944
• List of American films of 1944
• Amy Archer-Gilligan—nursing home owner accused of murdering elderly men in her care 1910–1917
• Black Widow murders—a real murder case whose events were compared to the fictional murders in the film

References

Explanatory notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Capra, Frank (1971). The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: Macmillan.
• Gunter, Matthew C. (2012). The Capra Touch: A Study of the Director's Hollywood Classics and War Documentaries, 1934-1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6402-9.
• Higham, Charles; Joel Greenberg (1968). Hollywood in the Forties. New York: A. S. Barnes. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
• McGilligan, Pat, ed. (1986). Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520056893.
• Stout, Kathryn and Richard. Movies as Literature. Wilmington, Delaware: Design-A-Study, 2002. ISBN 978-1-8919-7509-7 (Study questions on the plot, pp. 41–46.)

External links

• Arsenic and Old Lace at IMDb
• Arsenic and Old Lace at Rotten Tomatoes
• Arsenic and Old Lace at AllMovie
• Arsenic and Old Lace at the TCM Movie Database
• Arsenic and Old Lace at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Arsenic and Old Lace and Peter Lorre