Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) on Netflix
NR19441h 58mComedyCrimeThriller
Drama critic Mortimer Brewster marries Elaine Harper, then visits the aunts who raised him. A body sits in their window seat, and Abby and Martha confess to poisoning lonely old men.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.9/1078,155 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mortimer Brewster writes drama criticism and books in Brooklyn, and he has publicly dismissed marriage as an old-fashioned superstition. On Halloween he marries Elaine Harper, the minister's daughter next door. Before their honeymoon he stops at the family house to tell the aunts who raised him. Abby and Martha Brewster consider it a charity to end the suffering of lonely old bachelors: they rent a room, then serve elderberry wine doctored with arsenic, strychnine and cyanide. Mortimer's brother Teddy, who is convinced he is Theodore Roosevelt, blows a bugle and buries the victims in the cellar as yellow fever dead from the Panama Canal. Looking through the house for material he needs, Mortimer comes upon a body tucked in the window seat.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- 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 Richard Travis 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". Karloff gave permission for the use of his name in the film but remained in the play to appease the producers, who feared what stripping it of its primary cast would do to ticket sales; Raymond Massey took his place on screen.
- Hull, Adair and John Alexander reprised their roles from the 1941 stage production. Hull and Adair received an eight-week leave of absence from the still-running play, but Karloff, an investor in it and its main draw, did not, and the entire film was shot within those eight weeks.
- 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, but the play ran for three and a half years, so the film was not released until 1944.
- The set used for the Brewster home was reused in the 1942 film George Washington Slept Here. To ensure it looked the part of a dilapidated farmhouse there, Warner Bros. crews knocked out bannisters, rafters and floors on the set.
