The Big Idea Behind ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

Although previously produced as a playwright, New Yorker Joseph Kesselring didn't have a huge success until he at last hit on a winning formula with an insane frolic he called "Bodies in Our Cellars." Kesselring managed to get the script into the hands of Broadway star Dorothy Stickney in hopes of enticing her into playing one of the dear, demented old sisters. The play caught the attention of Stickney's husband, producer Howard Lindsay, who sent a copy to his partner and collaborator, Russell Crouse, with a note: "Shake your head, take a cup of coffee and read further. Have just read play about two charming old ladies who go around murdering old men. Very funny. How would you like to be a producer?" Russell quickly wired back: "Buy it." Although Kesselring's name was kept as full author, by the time it reached the stage of Broadway's Fulton Theater in 1941, it included a great deal of Lindsay and Crouse's contributions and had even been renamed by them Arsenic and Old Lace. Reviewers and drama critics raved, and the play was a huge commercial success. It ran for more than three years. br>
In the early stage of the play's opening run, Hollywood director Frank Capra caught a performance and saw the chance to make a movie that was purely for pleasure and not a social commentary like his more recent films. "Hell, I owe myself a picture like this," he said, reasoning that he had been "preaching one thing or another" for several years and hadn't had "a really good time" since It Happened One Night (1934).

By later that year Capra also had a more mercenary motive: having accepted an offer from the U.S. Army Signal Corps to make training films, he knew he would need some quick money to support his family while he labored for military pittance. He also reportedly owed taxes on his independent production of his previous hit Meet John Doe (1941). He saw Arsenic and Old Lace as a project he could complete quickly and cheaply while pocketing an easy $100,000 for himself. But when he went after Lindsay for the film rights, he found Warner Brothers had already purchased them.

Capra had previously made an offer to Lindsay and Crouse for the film rights to their long-running play Life with Father but negotiations failed over his insistence on script control. That play was eventually brought to the screen by director Michael Curtiz in 1947. There has been speculation that part of Capra's enthusiasm for this project stemmed from trying to get on the producers' good side for the rights to Life with Father.

Lindsay and Crouse were hoping French director René Clair, working in America at that time, would direct the movie version. But they went along with Warner's eventual choice of Capra because he had a more commercial reputation.

Although Capra had made most of his successful pictures at Columbia (it was those films that brought the studio from relative obscurity into the ranks of the major Hollywood players), his last film, Meet John Doe, had been successfully distributed by Warner Brothers. Because of that, he had a good reputation at the studio that owned the stage property he wanted. He prepared a relatively cheap $400,000 budget for it (including his expected $100,000) and promised to complete shooting in four weeks. The art director assigned to the project thought he was nuts, but Capra explained he planned to shoot it all on one set and offered sketches showing the old Brooklyn mansion designed for both interior and exterior filming. As for costs, Capra reasoned there would be no extras, no locations and no transportation beyond round-trip fares for the actors he hoped to import from the stage production and fifty dollars a day each for living expenses while in Hollywood.

There was another reason for the fast shooting schedule. Capra decided it was essential to have both the actresses who were playing the old sisters on Broadway, Jean Adair and Josephine Hull, as well as a few others from the stage production. The play's producers didn't want to hurt their box office by letting their hit cast take a leave for very long, but Capra eventually got Adair and Hull, at a cost of about $25,000 each, and John Alexander, so memorable as "Teddy Roosevelt" Brewster. (The director's first choice was actually character actor Andy Devine). But Lindsay and Crouse said no when it came to loaning out Boris Karloff, their star attraction (and an investor in the play) in the role of Jonathan, the murderous brother. Capra settled instead for distinguished actor and Warners contractee Raymond Massey in Karloff make-up.

Even with the addition of Warner players Jack Carson and Priscilla Lane, who had scored opposite James Cagney in The Roaring Twenties (1939) and in several movies with John Garfield (Four Daughters, 1938, Dust Be My Destiny, 1939), the project still needed a box office name. Capra considered Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and even Warners contractee Ronald Reagan. But the studio had recently contracted Cary Grant to play the title role in the film version of the hit play The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). Grant had signed on with the intention of contributing his salary to the British War Relief fund, but the casting choice was resoundingly criticized by the press. Those who loved the stage production couldn't imagine anyone but Monty Woolley in the part, and even many of Grant's fans agreed. So Warners had to find something else for him and offered Grant Arsenic and Old Lace. The part of Mortimer Brewster, however, was just one of the stage ensemble, so rewrites had to be made to give the star a more major part. Grant was paid $100,000, which he donated to the fund (although some accounts claim he got $60,000 more than that, which he kept for himself).

To adapt the script, the studio brought in its star writers, and twin brothers, Philip and Julius Epstein, who had very little contact with Capra while writing. They added several scenes, including an introductory riot at a Dodgers baseball game (merely to show the comically unorthodox behavior of Brooklynites) and Mortimer and Elaine applying for a marriage license and dodging the press (in the play, her preacher father's objection to Mortimer was that he was a drama critic, a very Broadway in-joke touch; in the film he was also shown to be a vocal opponent of marriage and author of "The Bachelor's Bible"). The screenplay also added the running gag about a cab driver waiting outside the mansion with his meter running while Mortimer tries to sort out the whole crazy mess, eventually presenting him with a sizable tab.

Two bits were eliminated from the stage script. After Mortimer finds out he was adopted and therefore not prone to the obvious madness that plagues his family, he declares delightedly to his bride: "I'm a bastard!" The Epsteins changed the line to "I'm the son of a sea cook," which still managed to get sizable laughs. At the end, when the sisters have been admitted into happy Dale Sanitarium, the play closes on them pouring their deadly wine for the sanitarium director, Mr. Witherspoon. This final macabre touch was not used in the film.

by Rob Nixon