Cary Grant, Raymond Massey, and Peter Lorre star in Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (Frank Capra, 1944)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, May 31, free with museum admission, 1:30
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
MoMA’s eight-week tribute to one of Hollywood’s coolest cats, “Modern Matinees: Mr. Cary Grant,” concludes May 31 with the film in which the actor born Archibald Leach believed he gave his “worst performance,” Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace. Grant, in a role meant for Bob Hope (and offered to Ronald Reagan and Jack Benny as well), stars as Mortimer Brewster, an affirmed bachelor and theater critic who has fallen in love with the preacher’s daughter, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), who lives in the house next to the one where Mortimer grew up with his brother, Jonathan (Raymond Massey), who ultimately went bad and has not been seen for many years. Ominously, separating the two Brooklyn houses is a small graveyard. Mortimer and Elaine get married, and they arrive at his childhood home to celebrate with the two aunts who raised him, Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair), a pair of ever-so-kind spinsters who also happen to be poisoning old men and having Mortimer’s other brother, Teddy (John Alexander), who thinks he’s President Theodore Roosevelt, bury them in the basement, where he’s building the Panama Canal. Jonathan, on the lam from the law, shows up that night with his plastic surgeon, Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre), who keeps stitching him new faces; the latest makes him look like Boris Karloff, as several people notice. (Karloff played the role on Broadway, but his contract prevented him from leaving the stage to make the movie, which was filmed in 1941 but not released until 1944, when Joseph Kesselring’s play ended its successful run. Adair, Alexander, and Hull were all in the play but were allowed to take time off to make the film.) Meanwhile, Officer Patrick O’Hara (Jack Carson), the new cop on the beat, keeps hanging around, but he’s not exactly clued in to what is going on right under his nose.
Arsenic and Old Lace concludes MoMA tribute to Cary Grant
“I was embarrassed doing it. I overplayed the character. It was a dreadful job for me,” Grant said of his performance in Arsenic and Old Lace, which turned out to be a very popular film. It’s hard to tell, as his comic timing makes for some very funny scenes, complete with pratfalls, making faces directly into the camera, and even channeling the Three Stooges at one point. Capra and screenwriters Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein take some cheap shots at Brooklyn, including Dodgers fans, but it’s best to just not pay attention to those opening scenes and wait for Grant and Lane to show up. Most of the film, which takes place over the course of one Halloween, is set in the Brewster family home, where cinematographer Sol Polito (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, The Petrified Forest) keeps things dark and musty. Longtime stage actresses Hull, who would go on to win an Oscar for Harvey, and Adair (The Naked City, Detective Story) are charming and delightful as the most unlikely of serial killers, while Massey (Abe Lincoln in Illinois, East of Eden) is pure evil as Jonathan, and Lorre (M, Casablanca) is as creepy as always as the weird Dr. Einstein; Lorre would later star in Jacques Tourneur’s 1963 spoof The Comedy of Terrors with Karloff. Character actor Alexander is very loud as Teddy, who regularly runs up the stairs screaming, “Charge!” And despite his misgivings, Grant, who donated his full salary to war-related charities, is fine as Mortimer, blending comedy, horror, and romance with a sly wink. The film grows more and more convoluted as more people get involved, including James Gleason (Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Clock) as Lt. Rooney, Edward Everett Horton (Lost Horizon, The Front Page) as Mr. Witherspoon, and Grant Mitchell (The Man Who Came to Dinner, Father Is a Prince) as Rev. Harper, and the endless gag of the cabdriver (Garry Owen) waiting outside gets old quick. But this is Capra, after all, so you have to take the good with the bad. And you’ll think twice the next time someone offers you elderberry wine.
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