Arsenic and old Lace (1944 and 1969) - a Film Review

Critic Mortimer Brewster finds out on his wedding day that his beloved aunts have killed a number of older men and that madness runs in his family.

This is a film based on a play by Joseph Kesselring, and is filmed twice. The first movie that was made of it was shown into cinemas in 1944. This film was directed by Frank Capra with Cary Grant, Prescilla Lane, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre in the lead. In 1969 a remake was made for television with Bob Crane, Sue Lyon, Helen Hayes and Lillian Gish in the lead. I will discuss both in this review.

When Capra began recording in 1941, the play is a big hit on Broadway. To not interfere with the success of the play, Warner Bros., with the producers of the play, decided that the movie will not be featured in the cinema before it ran out on Broadway. Thus it came to pass that the first performance, for the troops overseas, was shown in 1943. The following year the film was screened in the cinemas. The film is characterized by the fantastic performance by Cary Grant, who plays Mortimer Brewster. He's acting is over the top and he's getting away with it too. He himself thought this was an objection, so he found this to be his worst movie. Perhaps that was also one of the reasons that he donated his entire $ 100,000 salary to the U.S. War Relief Fund. I think his acting style in this movie fits the comic story and it's a screwball comedy after all.

Where Grant is brilliant with his over acting, actresses Josephine Hull and Jean Adair are very timid as the two killing old ladies. Also Peter Lorre, who plays the creepy plastic surgeon, is at his best. It's the last doctor you want to get surgery from. No wonder he has ended up in the criminal circuit.

The play had a funny twist because Mortimer's cruel brother was played by Boris Karloff. This is funny because it is said in the film that he looks like Frankenstein's Monster, a role that Boris Karloff actually played. Unfortunately, I think he was not cast for this role in the movie. He himself wanted the role, but the movie producers found it better that he stayed on Broadway because the play had such a success. However, they were afraid that Karloff would start a lawsuit because Mortimer's brother had to resemble Karloff. That's why Karloff made a statement stating that he would not sue. He signed the statement because he was an investor in the play and would earn a lot of money with the film and he was right to do so, because not only was the movie a hit in the cinemas, but to this day the film is still Broadcast regularly on TV.

After the Broadway success and the success of the cinema film, a television production of the play could not be left out. In 1955, the story was for a television broadcast of ‘The Best of Broadway’ was brought back to an hour. In this, Boris Karloff was to repeat his successful performance on Broadway, and Peter Lorre and Edward Everett Horton were re-performing the same roles they played in the 1944 film. Karloff repeated his performance in 1962 in another half-hour TV movie. Helen Hayes played Aunt Abby Brewster, in the 1955 version, and she did so well that she was asked for the same role in 1969, for a new TV production. This TV movie was recorded for a live audience and it is therefore not quite fair to compare this television production with the 1944 masterpiece. The other aunt is played by no-one less than Silent Filmstar Lillian Gish. Where in the 1944 film the dialogues between the aunts are divided equally, Lillian Gish in the '69 version gets remarkably little text. As a Gish fan, I think this is a missed opportunity, because I find her one of the best actresses that ever walked on this earth.

Too bad about the 1969 television production, I find that the story has been transported from the 40's to the 60's. As a result, some typical Roosevelt jokes lost their meaning. Also a pity is that they changed Doctor Einstein's name into Jonas Salk, Salk was a virologist who developed a vaccine against polio in real life. I doubt if there is anybody today whose name Salk says something, while we all know who Einstein was.

Bob Crane does his best in his role as a leading man, but does not go away with the over acting. In the scene where he chases a potential tenant from the house of his murderous aunts is just ridiculous. Saillant detail is that Crane is tied up in this version of Arsenic and Old Lace while Johnathan Brewster and Dr. Salk talk about how to kill him. Extra creepy is this if you know that Crane himself was found dead nine years after this film and his body was tied up with electrical cables to a chair. The mysteries around his death were never completely cleared up. In 2002, a movie, about Crances life, was released, 'Auto Focus’ and in 2017 the book 'Who Killed Bob Crane?' Is going to be released.

Links:

Arsenic and old Lace 1944 trailer