Pop Culture 101 - ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

The play on which this film is based is one of the most popular in the world theatrical repertoire, particularly among local community theaters. Russell Crouse and Harold Lindsay, producers of the original Broadway production, never allowed the show to get stale. They frequently visited even road productions to see if laughs were being missed through sloppy timing or a shift in emphasis or tone.

Joseph Kesselring's source material has been adapted many times and in several languages for filmed productions, including TV versions in Denmark, Spain (in Catalan), Belgium, Yugoslavia, and a mini-series in Turkey.

The play was also adapted for American TV in 1954 (for The Best of Broadway series) with Orson Bean as Mortimer, Helen Hayes and Billie Burke as the Brewster sisters, and Boris Karloff reprising his stage role as Jonathan. John Alexander once again played Teddy, as he had done on both Broadway and film, and Peter Lorre and Everett Edward Horton recreated their screen roles as Dr. Einstein and Mr. Witherspoon. A 1969 TV production featured Hayes again, this time with Lillian Gish as her sister, Bob Crane (of Hogan's Heroes fame) as Mortimer, and David Wayne as Teddy. The role of Jonathan was played, appropriately, by Fred Gwynne, who was famous as the Karloff/Frankenstein-inspired Herman Munster on TV.

Joseph Kesselring wrote one other play that made it to the screen, Aggie Appleby Maker of Men (1933), starring Charles Farrell, Wynne Gibson, and Zasu Pitts.

One of the tombstones in the cemetery next to the Brewster house bears the name "Archie Leach," Cary Grant's real name. Grant also made an attempt to "bury" his old identity in an earlier movie, His Girl Friday (1940), when he refers to a horrible fate suffered by the last person who crossed him, Archie Leach.

In her other most famous screen role, Harvey (1950), Josephine Hull is on the opposite side of an attempt to have a relative committed, this time her brother (James Stewart), who she tries to put away when he claims to have an invisible rabbit for a friend. Hull also created that role on stage.

by Rob Nixon