Insanity Runs in My Family "It Practically Gallops"
| Arsenic and One-time Lace | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed past | Frank Capra |
| Screenplay by | Julius J. Epstein Philip Grand. Epstein |
| Based on | Arsenic and Old Lace 1941 play past Joseph Kesselring |
| Produced by | Frank Capra Jack L. Warner |
| Starring | Cary Grant Raymond Massey Peter Lorre Priscilla Lane Jack Carson Josephine Hull Jean Adair |
| Cinematography | Sol Polito |
| Edited by | Daniel Mandell |
| Music by | Max Steiner |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release dates |
|
| Running fourth dimension | 118 minutes |
| Country | United states of america |
| Linguistic communication | English |
| Budget | $ane,164,000[two] |
| Box office | $4,784,000[2] |
Arsenic and Former Lace is a 1944 American black comedy film directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant. It was based on Joseph Kesselring'due south 1941 play, Arsenic and Erstwhile Lace. The script adaptation was written by Julius J. Epstein and Philip Thousand. Epstein.[3] The contract with the play'due south producers stipulated that the film would not exist released until the Broadway run concluded. The original planned release engagement was September thirty, 1942. The play was a tremendous hit, running for three and a half years, so the film was non released until 1944.
The lead role of Mortimer Brewster was originally intended for Bob Hope, only he could not be released from his contract with Paramount Pictures. Capra had as well approached Jack Benny and Richard Travis earlier learning that Grant would have the part. 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 apply of his proper noun in the film, remained in the play to gratify the producers, who were afraid of what stripping the play of all its master bandage would do to ticket sales.[iv] Raymond Massey took Karloff's place on screen.[5] [Note i] The movie'due south 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, also equally John Alexander (who played Teddy Brewster), were reprising their roles from the 1941 stage production.[7] Hull and Adair both received an eight-week leave of absenteeism from the phase production, which was still running, just Karloff did non, equally he was an investor in the phase product and its chief depict. The entire flick was shot inside those eight weeks. The film price just over $one.2 million of a $two meg budget to produce.[8]
Plot [edit]
The Brewster family unit 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, a writer who has repeatedly denounced marriage equally "an sometime-fashioned superstition", falls in love with Elaine Harper, the government minister's girl who grew up next door to him. On Halloween day, Mortimer and Elaine get married. Elaine goes to her begetter's house to tell her father and pack for the honeymoon and Mortimer returns to Abby and Martha, the aunts who raised him in the erstwhile family home. Mortimer'southward blood brother, Teddy, who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt, resides with them. Each fourth dimension Teddy goes upstairs, he yells "Charge!" and takes the stairs at a run, imitating Roosevelt'due south famous charge up San Juan Colina.
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 accept 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 mail service a "Room for Rent" sign to attract a victim, and so serve a glass of elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine, and "simply a compression of cyanide" while getting acquainted. The bodies are buried in the basement past Teddy, who believes they are yellow fever victims who perished in the building of the Panama Canal.
While Mortimer digests this information, his blood brother Jonathan arrives with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein. Jonathan is as well a serial murderer trying to escape from the law and dispose of his latest victim, Mr. Spinalzo. Jonathan's face, contradistinct by Einstein while drunk, resembles Boris Karloff'due south Frankenstein monster makeup.[Note two] 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'south victim is a stranger and a "foreigner". Jonathan besides declares his intention to kill Mortimer.
Elaine is impatient to go out on their honeymoon only is concerned near Mortimer'due south increasingly odd behavior as he frantically attempts to command the situation. He tries unsuccessfully to alert the bumbling police to Jonathan's presence. To describe attention away from his aunts and deprive them of their willing just 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 tin't remain married to her.
Eventually Jonathan is arrested, Einstein flees later on having signed Teddy'due south commitment papers, Teddy is safely consigned to an institution, and his aunts insist upon joining him. Upon hearing that Mortimer signed the delivery 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 afterwards all: his female parent was the family melt 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 [edit]
The contemporary critical reviews were uniformly positive. The New York Times critic summed up the bulk view, "As a whole, Arsenic and Former Lace, the Warner motion-picture show which came to the Strand yesterday, is practiced macabre fun."[ane] Multifariousness 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'south ain intelligent direction rounds out."[ix] Harrison'southward Reports wrote: "An hilarious amusement, it should turn out to be one of the year'southward pinnacle box-office attractions."[10] John Lardner of The New Yorker chosen the film "practically every bit funny in picture form as information technology did on the stage, and that is very funny indeed."[11]
Assessing the moving-picture show in 1968, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg state in Hollywood in the Forties that "Frank Capra provided a rather overstated and strained version of Arsenic and Erstwhile Lace".[12]
The film is recognized past American Film Institute in these lists:
- 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #thirty[thirteen]
Box-office [edit]
According to Warner Bros records, the motion picture earned $2,836,000 domestically and $ane,948,000 strange.[2]
[edit]
The play was written by Joseph Kesselring, son of German immigrants and a former professor at Bethel Higher, a pacifist Mennonite college. Information technology was written in the antiwar atmosphere of the tardily 1930s.[14] Capra scholar Matthew C. Gunter argues that the deep theme of both the play and film is America's difficulty in coming to grips with both the positive and negative consequences of the freedom it professes to uphold, and which the Brewsters need. Although their business firm is the nicest in the street, there are 12 bodies in the basement. That inconsistency is a metaphor for America's struggle to reconcile the violence of much of its past with the pervasive myths about its function as a beacon of freedom.[15]
Bandage [edit]
- Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster
- Priscilla Lane as Elaine Brewster
- Josephine Hull as Aunt Abby Brewster
- Jean Adair as Aunt Martha Brewster
- Raymond Massey as Jonathan Brewster
- Peter Lorre as Dr. Herman Einstein
- John Alexander as "Teddy Roosevelt" Brewster
- Jack Carson as Officeholder Patrick O'Hara
- John Ridgely every bit Officer Sanders
- Edward McNamara equally Constabulary Sgt. Brophy
- James Gleason as Police Lt. Rooney
- Edward Everett Horton every bit Mr. Witherspoon
- Grant Mitchell as Reverend Harper
- Vaughan Glaser every bit Estimate Cullman
- Chester Clute equally Dr. Gilchrist
- Edward McWade every bit Mr. Gibbs - the old man
- Garry Owen as Taxicab Driver
- Charles Lane as commencement reporter
- Hank Mann as Second reporter with camera
- Spencer Charters as Matrimony License Clerk
Radio adaptations [edit]
Arsenic and Old Lace was adjusted as a half-hour radio play for the November 25, 1946, broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater with Boris Karloff and Eddie Albert.[sixteen] A one-hour accommodation was broadcast on Jan 25, 1948 on the Ford Theatre, with Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, and John Alexander reprising their roles.[17]
See likewise [edit]
- List of American films of 1944
- Amy Archer-Gilligan—nursing home owner accused of murdering elderly men in her intendance 1910–1917
- Black Widow murders—a real murder example whose events were compared to the fictional murders in the film
References [edit]
Explanatory notes
- ^ As stated in an episode of This Is Your Life, Karloff was really an investor and a producer of the stage play who received royalties whenever it was performed.[6]
- ^ The self-referential joke highlights Karloff's portrayal of the character in the Broadway production.[6]
Citations
- ^ a b "Movie Review - Arsenic and Old Lace". The New York Times. September two, 1944. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
- ^ a b c Warner Bros financial data in The William Shaefer Ledger. See Appendix i, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Boob tube, (1995) 15:sup1, 1-31 p 25 DOI: 10.1080/01439689508604551
- ^ McGilligan 1986, p. 170.
- ^ "Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) - Notes - TCM.com". Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved 2019-11-03 .
- ^ Atkinson, Brooks. "Review: Arsenic and Erstwhile Lace." The New York Times,January eleven, 1941.
- ^ a b Nixon, Rob. "The large thought behind Arsenic and Old Lace." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: June 25, 2012.
- ^ "Notes: Arsenic and Old Lace." Turner Archetype Movies. Retrieved: June 25, 2012.
- ^ "Special feature section." Arsenic and Former Lace, DVD release: 65025.1B.
- ^ "Film Reviews". Variety. New York. September half dozen, 1944. p. x.
- ^ "'Arsenic and Erstwhile Lace' with Cary Grant, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre and Priscilla Lane". Harrison's Reports. September two, 1944. p. 143.
- ^ Lardner, John (September 9, 1944). "The Electric current Cinema". The New Yorker. New York. p. 51.
- ^ Higham and Greenberg 1968, p. 161.
- ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs" (PDF). American Film Plant. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-06-24. Retrieved 2016-08-05 .
- ^ See Keith L. Sprunger, "Another Look: Joseph Kesselring, Bethel Higher, and the Origins of Arsenic and Quondam Lace, Mennonite Life (May, 2013). Archived 2014-02-24 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Gunter 2012, pp. 49–51.
- ^ "Boris Karloff to Repeat 'Arsenic' Office Monday, WHP". Harrisburg Telegraph. November 23, 1946. p. 19. Retrieved September 13, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Horace Heidt'south Talent Search Will Bring District Artists to Network This night - Other Broadcasts Tonight". Youngstown Vindicator. Jan 25, 1948. p. C-12. Retrieved 2020-06-04 .
Bibliography
- Capra, Frank (1971). The Proper name Above the Championship: An Autobiography . New York: Macmillan.
- Gunter, Matthew C. (2012). The Capra Affect: A Study of the Director's Hollywood Classics and War Documentaries, 1934-1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN978-0-7864-6402-9.
- 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'due south Gilded Age. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN978-0520056893.
- Stout, Kathryn and Richard. Movies as Literature. Wilmington, Delaware: Design-A-Written report, 2002. ISBN 978-1-8919-7509-7 (Study questions on the plot, pp. 41–46.)
External links [edit]
- Arsenic and Old Lace at IMDb
- Arsenic and One-time 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 American Motion picture Institute Itemize
- Arsenic and Former Lace and Peter Lorre
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_and_Old_Lace_(film)
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