1153 Arsenic and Old Lace

[Feego]

I was just reading about the play on Wikipedia, and interestingly Lugosi did indeed play the role of Jonathan on stage later in the 1940s and 50s! Also, Erich von Stroheim replaced Boris Karloff in the original Broadway run. While we're on the subject of fantasy casting, it also could have been fun if they had cast Lon Chaney Jr. and had everyone saying that he looked like the Wolf Man.

[knives]

Honestly the whole thing is endemic of the laziness of the project which was seemingly rushed so that everyone could move on to their war duties.

[swo17]

the 1955 TV adaptation (not that I've seen it) in which Karloff finally got his wish

Looking into this more, I cited 1955 because that was the first hit that came up when I originally searched for this on IMDb, but they actually show three different TV adaptations starring Karloff in the Jonathan role. A 1949 version brings back Josephine Hull (Aunt Abby). The 1955 version brings back John Alexander (Teddy), Edward Everett Horton, and Peter Lorre, while putting Orson Bean in the Cary Grant role (a Being John Malkovich connection!) And the 1962 version casts Tony Randall in the Cary Grant role and Tom Bosley as Teddy.

Here is the first half of the 1949 version and the full 1962 version

[dwk]

Arsenic and Old Beaver

[omegadirective]

Old Beaver...?
ew...

[Randall Maysin Again]

This movie sounds just antic and terrible, but I hope the Charles Dennis commentary (yes I know he's been on at least one past Criterion release, but still) heralds Criterion more consistently broadening their pool of experts a little more and using more of the specific people available who've, you know, actually written books and stuff related to the films, or are even/also related to one of the filmmakers, instead of just slapping another David Cairns video essay or something, impressive and qualified as he obviously is, on every old Hollywood/whatever release. A Sturges scholar (or hopefully, a bunch of them!) on a new Sturges release (and this is a particular pet peeve of mine), David Goodrich or Josh Kanin on The Thin Man and Adam's Rib, respectively, etc. Criterion have been okay in this regard, but I think they could do better. They've definitely done some pretty lazy, or just hapless, releases.

[tenia]

Well, like a few other big US studios licenses to Criterion, this just looks like Criterion having to do the studios' job at getting these movies released on BD and actually not doing it in a much better way than if the studios would have done it themselves. It's what I hate the most nowadays in the video market, because it makes it obvious how the studios have just quit curating most of their catalogue and the indie release doesn't even look that much better than if they would have bothered.
It's a shame but at least, these restorations can be more widely seen so there's that.

[zedz]

I'm working through my Criterion kevyip alphabetically and it's off to a bad start with this stinker. This is one of those 'comedies' where everything in it - and that's a lot - is coded as 'funny' but isn't actually funny. Running gags that were dead on their feet the first time around ("Chaaarge!"), a sense that if a line isn't getting a laugh it needs to be said LOUDER, every beat accentuated and over-played. Just a horrible couple of hours in bad company. If there's a less amusing screwball comedy out there, warn me now.

The weird thing is that conceptually, it works. It's got a solid black comedy premise, strong comic twists (who doesn't love a good rival serial killers comedy?), and a mise-en-abime gag that's almost brilliant - but which the film completely and utterly destroys, then reconstitutes, then destroys again, over and over, with increasing desperation. Spoiler: Raymond Massey is not Boris Karloff, and no amount of dialogue and double takes is going to turn him into Boris Karloff, so the whole film is plunged into an Unfunny Valley every five minutes whenever it insists on the joke. Couldn't they have reconceived the gag for somebody else? (I mean, Peter Lorre is right there, and fits the bill.)

In the plus column, Capra shoots the blackout scenes beautifully.

[knives]

Unfortunately somehow there are worse screwballs out there. Read our dedicated thread for specific warnings (general rule of thumb is avoid Fred MacMurray)

[Matt]

I think, however, that there are no worse screwballs that are still somehow as generally beloved as this one. People who love this are as mystifying to me as fans of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

[therewillbeblus]

It’s all the worse for pulling off exactly one gag at the very end, proving they can all do it and just collectively missed the mark for two straight hours instead

[tenia]

It's been a long expected upgrade for me, along with Bringing up Baby, but it's been 20 years since I last saw Arsenic (and I have an OK memory of it). I'm now worried that like Bringing Up Baby (that my girlfriend hated, and I can't say I loved it much either), this is another beloved movie that is now so dated it gets hard to believe what the deal is with it.

[hearthesilence]

Wow. I absolutely love Bringing Up Baby, always have. Arsenic and Old Lace on the other hand never won me over - it's not bad, you can do much, much worse for family-friendly Halloween viewing, but it just seems too cartoonishly broad and really insubstantial compared to Grant's best work.

[tenia]

What particularly bothered my GF so much with Baby, and I agree with her though it bothered her more than me, is how much Hepburn looks reduced to a Manic Pixie Girl aspect. She seems to be wholly depending of Grant's character, that in himself often is kind of a big dullard. I get that it's a trope, maybe my GF less so, but it felt very mechanical and scenaristical in how it goes on and resolves. So yeah, disappointment on my side and huge "wtf did you just made me watch ?" from my GF.

[therewillbeblus]

I dunno, it's about two weird people looking for connection - one knows they're weird (her), the other doesn't (him). Yeah, that's a classic narrative for the MPDG vehicle to help the uptight male protagonist realize and accept all his stuff (identity, circumstances, whatever) but Bringing Up Baby doesn't feel like that to me. Hepburn is screwing with Grant early on, not exactly intentionally, but playfully engaging with the world in the way she often does. It's after they get into these cute conflicts that she grows an attraction, but I also think her weirdness genuinely makes her believe that he's attracted to her too, and this becomes the truth - something he didn't realize. Everything plays out a lot more organically than Hepburn-as-Grant's-vehicle-for-self-actualization. I suppose one could critique Holiday too, since Hepburn isn't up to date with 21st century feminist independence and would ideally like to settle down with the right weirdo too, but that's a film more explicitly about two weirdos enjoying one another's company. Maybe your GF would like that more?

[The Curious Sofa]

I'm with Tenia, Bringing Up Baby has a similar effect on me to Arsenic and Old Lace, though I don't hate it nearly as much. I find the manic overacting more exhausting than funny, it's like watching hyperactive children. For me, it has nothing to do with the themes or the characters (I love Bogdanovich's semi-remake What's Up, Doc?), it's the approach that I find off-putting. Hawks took this to its logical conclusion in Monkey Business, where adults literally become children, which I find totally unwatchable. And Hawks, Grant and Hepburn all have made comedies I love.

I'll throw in Harvey (1950) as a much-loved comedy classic I don't get the appeal of, though it's more the grating whimsy than any manic action, which I find off-putting.

[reaky]

Howard Hawks is widely regarded as one of the masters of screwball, but I find the freneticism and mugging of TWENTIETH CENTURY, BRINGING UP BABY and HIS GIRL FRIDAY wearying and mirthless. McCarey and Sturges, by contrast, wring hilarity out of hustle and slapstick. It’s a mystery to me what makes the difference.

[Randall Maysin Again]

I agree with you both about the Hawks comedies--but I still admire the hell out of them, and appreciate and even enjoy them in a more reserved way than with my personal favorite/most hilarious comedies. But there's a line between brilliant but mirthless and antic, and just desperate, miserable, cutesy, audience-pandering, decidedly not brilliant comedy, like the worst of Mel Brooks. I think Arsenic and Old Lace falls well past that line (on the bad side).

[therewillbeblus]

From reading the McCarthy biography, Hawks famously found comedy more interesting when the script was not vying for laughs, allowing the social absurdity of everyday performance -accentuated, of course- to transform the lines into comedy. I imagine that some consequences of his strategy (placing more of a burden on the actors to enliven the material, etc.) irk some, while the elided genius in his particular approach is less pronounced (by design)

[Matt]

Hawks also thought he went too far with Bringing Up Baby, making every character a “screwball.” It does have its rough patches (for me, the jail scene in particular), but I think it’s otherwise wonderful. Monkey Business is a terrible disappointment—great cast, great premise—but it’s just not funny.

Sturges probably has a better batting average in comedy overall, including the scripts he didn’t direct, but Hawks really set the template.

[Orlac]

Spoiler: Raymond Massey is not Boris Karloff, and no amount of dialogue and double takes is going to turn him into Boris Karloff, so the whole film is plunged into an Unfunny Valley every five minutes whenever it insists on the joke. Couldn't they have reconceived the gag for somebody else? (I mean, Peter Lorre is right there, and fits the bill.)

Karloff was succeeded when he went on tour by Erich von Stroheim and Bela Lugosi - both rather odd choices from a performance point of view, as they are distinctly European in a family of American/British types. I think Massey is wonderfully creepy-looking but he plays the part deadly-serious to the point where he doesn't really fit the movie - judging by the radio shows, Karloff plays the part quite humoursly.

I think its a shame they didn't cast Lugosi in the film, but change the gag from what happened with him on stage (Lugosi played a Jonathan who looks like Lugosi) to a Jonathan played by Lugosi who gets ticked off at being mistaken for Karloff! But then as Tom Weaver once put it - "by the 1940s, the only way Lugosi was getting into A-pictures was by buying a ticket!"

[knives]

Honestly it would have been funny to have people mistake him as Lincoln. That’s a pretty great and bizarre way to change the gag.

[zedz]

I think we now have hard evidence that any random contributor to this thread could have written a better screenplay for this film!

[JSC]

Well, to each their own. Personally, I have always enjoyed Bringing Up Baby and Arsenic and Old Lace so I might
as well say it.

[zedz]

Well, to each their own. Personally, I have always enjoyed Bringing Up Baby and Arsenic and Old Lace so I might
as well say it.

Bringing Up Baby is a comic masterpiece, probably because it's actually very, very funny.