Arsenic and Old Lace is a 1944 film directed by Frank Capra based on a play of the same name by Joseph Kesselring. The script was adapted by Julius J. Epstein. Capra actually filmed the movie in 1941, but it was not released until 1944, after the original stage version had finished its run on Broadway. The lead role of Mortimer Brewster was originally intended for Bob Hope, but he couldn't be released from his contract with Paramount. Capra had also approached Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan before settling on Cary Grant. Boris Karloff played Jonathan Brewster on the stage, while in the movie Raymond Massey, who "looks like Karloff", took his place. Because Karloff was still appearing in the Broadway play during the film's production, he was unable to do the picture.[1]
In addition to Grant as Mortimer Brewster, the film also starred Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha, respectively. Hull and Adair as well as John Alexander (who played 'Teddy Roosevelt') reprising their roles from the 1941 stage production. Hull and Adair both received an 8 week leave of absence from the stage production that 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 8 weeks. The film cost just over $1.2 million of a $2 million budget to produce.[2]
Plot
A drama critic and confirmed bachelor, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), has written a number of books describing marriage as an old-fashioned superstition. Nevertheless, he falls in love with and marries Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), who grew up next door to his old family home in Brooklyn.
Immediately after the wedding - on Halloween, as it happens - Mortimer visits the bizarre relatives who still live there, two elderly aunts, Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha (Josephine Hull, Jean Adair) and his brother Teddy (John Alexander). Teddy thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt; each time he goes upstairs he blows a bugle, yells "Charge!", and takes the stairs at a run (an imitation of Roosevelt's famous charge up San Juan Hill). He is also digging the "Panama Canal" in their cellar. Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in a window seat, and tells his aunts that Teddy must be sent to an asylum, as he has killed someone.
At this point, Mortimer's sweet aunts explain that they are responsible ("It's one of our charities"). They have developed what Mortimer calls the "very bad habit" of ending the presumed suffering of lonely old bachelors by serving them elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch of cyanide". The bodies are buried in the basement by Teddy, who thinks he is digging locks for the Panama Canal and burying yellow fever victims.
To complicate matters further, Mortimer's brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) arrives with his alcoholic accomplice in tow — plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein, played by Peter Lorre and loosely based on gangland surgeon Joseph Moran. Jonathan is a psychotic gangster trying to escape the police and find a place to dispose of the corpse of his latest victim, a certain Mr. Spenalzo. His face, as altered by Einstein while drunk, resembles that of Boris Karloff in his makeup as Frankenstein's monster. This comparison is frequently noted in the film, much to Jonathan's annoyance (originally a self-referential joke). Jonathan, upon finding out his aunts' secret, decides to bury Spenalzo in the cellar (to which Abby and Martha object vehemently, because their victims were all nice gentlemen) and soon declares his intention to kill Mortimer.
Mortimer makes increasingly frantic attempts to stay on top of the situation as his bride waits for him at her family home next door, including multiple efforts to alert the bumbling local cops to the threat Jonathan poses, as well as have the paperwork filled that will have Teddy declared legally insane and committed (giving him a safe explanation for the bodies should the cops find them). He worries whether he will go insane like the rest of the Brewster family, or as he puts it "Insanity runs in my family, practically gallops!". While explaining this to Elaine, he claims they've been crazy since the first Brewster's came to America as pilgrims. But eventually Jonathan is arrested, while Teddy and the two aunts are safely consigned to an asylum. In the end, Mortimer is overjoyed to learn that he was adopted and is not biologically related to the Brewsters after all. He is actually the son of a sea cook, exclaiming: "Elaine, Elaine, Where are you? Can you hear me? I'm not really a Brewster. I'm a son of a sea cook!" (in the original play, the censored line actually was, "Elaine! Did you hear? Do you understand? Darling, I'm a bastard!").[3]
Cast
Veteran character actor Charles Lane appears as a photographer at City Hall trying to get a picture of Mortimer Brewster getting a marriage license at the beginning of the film.
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."
Twenty-four years after the film was released, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg wrote Hollywood in the Forties where they stated that "Frank Capra provided a rather overstated and strained version of Arsenic and Old Lace".[4]
American Film Institute recognition
In a separate AFI poll, star Cary Grant was named # 2 of the 25 greatest male American screen legends.
Adaptations to Other Media
Arsenic and Old Lace was adapted as a radio play on the November 25, 1946 broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater with Boris Karloff and Eddie Albert and on the January 25, 1948 broadcast of the Ford Theatre.
See also
- Black Widow murders — a real murder case whose events were compared to the fictional murders in the film
References
- Notes
- ^ As stated in an episode of This Is Your Life, Karloff was actually an original producer of the stage play and received royalties whenever it was performed.
- ^ From the special feature section of Warner Bros. DVD release 65025.1B
- ^ "Arsenic and Old Lace Synopsis." gbproductions.org. Retrieved: October 24, 2009.
- ^ Higham and Greenberg 1968, p. 161.
- Bibliography
- Capra, Frank. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971. ISBN 0-30680-771-8.
- Higham, Charles and Joel Greenberg. Hollywood in the Forties. London: A. Zwemmer Limited, 1968.
External links
|
Films Directed by Frank Capra |
|
| 1920s |
|
|
| 1930s |
|
|
| 1940s |
|
|
| 1950s |
|
|
| 1960s |
|
|
