Arsenic and Old Lace (movie)
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Arsenic and Old Lace is a film directed by Frank Capra based on a play (see Arsenic and Old Lace (play)) 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 while the studio waited for the stage version to finish its run on Broadway.
In addition to Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster, the film also starred Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the Brewster Sisters, Abby and Martha, respectively. Both Hull and Adair reprised their roles from the original 1941 stage production as well as John Alexander as Teddy.
The film concerns a theatre-hating drama critic and confirmed bachelor Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) who on his wedding day must cope with his bizarre family, especially his two elderly aunts who live in the old family home in Brooklyn.
Mortimer's aunts are "kindly" serving lonely old bachelors elderberry wine poisoned with arsenic and then burying the bodies in the basement. His younger brother Teddy thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt and yells "Charge!" when running up the stairs (after Teddy Roosevelt's 'charge up San Juan Hill'). Mortimer's other brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey), a wanted murderer whose face resembles that of Frankenstein's creature (as portrayed by Boris Karloff, a comparison frequently made in the film's dialogue), arrives with a surgeon, Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) in tow. Eventually, Mortimer is overjoyed to discover that he is not biologically related to these insane people, and is actually the son of a sea cook.