Arsenic and Old Lace - Definition and Overview

Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by Joseph Kesselring, which was made into a film by director Frank Capra. Capra actually filmed the movie in 1941 but it was not released until 1944.

On his wedding day, theatre-hating drama critic and confirmed bachelor Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) 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(he yells "Charge!" when running up the stairs), and his other brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey), a wanted murderer whose face resembles that of Frankenstein's creature, arrives with a plastic surgeon, Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) in tow. (In the original stage production, Jonathan was played by Boris Karloff, and the script made joking references to his resemblance to the actor.) 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.