Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is a confirmed bachelor and drama critic with two wealthy aunts in Brooklyn. Martha Brewster (Jean Adair) and Abby Brewster (Josephine Hull) are kind and sweet spinsters with a solution for the loneliness of old gentlemen. They poison them with wine and bury them in their cellar--with a proper Christian burial, of course. They entrap their victims with a "Room For Rent" sign posted in front of the old Brewster family mansion. Their recipe: one gallon of homemade elderberry wine mixed with a teaspoon of arsenic, a half teaspoon of strychnine and a pinch of cyanide.
Nephew Teddy Brewster (John Alexander) is quite insane and thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt. He believes the murder victims died of yellow fever and the cellar is the Panama Canal. Teddy yells, "Charge!" and runs up the stairs blowing his bugle every time he enters the room. In his madness he imagines the stairs are San Juan Hill. The aunts have made arrangements for Teddy to be institutionalized in the Happydale Sanitarium after their passing.
Mortimer marries his fiancee Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), daughter of his neighbour Reverend Harper (Grant Mitchell). He wrote "Marriage: A Fraud and a Failure" and is working on "Mind Over Matrimony" so at first he tells Elaine, "Don't you understand? How can I marry you? Me! The symbol of bachelorhood. I've sneered at every love scene in every play. I've written four million words against marriage. Now I'll be hooked to a minister's daughter." They intend to honeymoon in Niagara Falls.
On Hallowe'en he visits his aunts to tell them the news, but discovers their secret when he finds a dead body in the window seat.
Mortimer: "Now look, darling, how did he die?"
Abby: "Oh, Mortimer, don't be so inquisitive. The gentleman died because he drank some wine with poison in it."
Mortimer: "Well, how did the poison get in the wine?"
Martha: "Well, we put it in wine because it's less noticeable. When it's in tea it has a distinct odor."
Aunt Abby tells him, "Now Mortimer, you just forget about it. Forget you ever saw the gentleman." Mortimer contacts the insane asylum to have Teddy committed to Happydale, but Mr. Witherspoon (Edward Everett Horton) explains, "We have several Theodore Roosevelts at the moment and it would lead to trouble. Now if he thought that, uh, well, Mr. Brewster, we're a bit short of Napoleons at present..."
To complicate matters, homicidal nephew Jonathan Brewster (Raymond Massey) shows up with dead bodies of his own. There are already a dozen buried in the cellar. Jonathan's partner is incompetent plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre), whose operations made Jonathan look like Boris Karloff (who played the role on Broadway). The pair argue over how many people Jonathan has murdered.
Einstein: "Johnny, why did you kill that man? He was being nice to us and gave us a ride."
Jonathan: "He said I looked like Boris Karloff."
Einstein: "You got twelve, they got twelve."
(angrily grabs Dr. Einstein's necktie)
Jonathan: "I've got thirteen!"
Einstein: "No, Johnny, twelve - don't brag."
Jonathan: "Thirteen. There's Mr. Spinalzo and the first one in London, two in Johannesburg, one in Sydney, one in Melbourne, two in San Francisco, one in Phoenix, Arizona."
Einstein: "Phoenix?"
Jonathan: "The filling station."
Einstein: "Filling station? Oh."
(gesture of slitting throat)
Einstein: "Yes.
Jonathan: "Then three in Chicago and one in South Bend."
Einstein: "You cannot count the one in South Bend. He died of pneumonia."
Jonathan: "He wouldn't have died of pneumonia if I hadn't shot him."
Einstein: "No, no, Johnny. You cannot count him. You got twelve, they got twelve. The old ladies is just as good as you are."
Hull, Adair and Alexander repeat their roles from the Broadway production and are excellent. Grant is especially funny as the straight man reacting to an environment of lunacy, and when he falls in love with Elaine he feels the genetic madness in his family makes marriage impossible. Elaine tells him, "We were married today. We were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Your brother tries to strangle me. A taxi is waiting, and now you want to sleep on a window seat...You can take your honeymoon, your wedding ring, your taxi, your window seat, and put 'em in a barrel and push 'em all over Niagara Falls!" In the end, Mortimer is happy to learn that he was actually adopted by the Brewsters.
Also in the cast are: Jack Carson (Patrick O'Hara), John Ridgely (Officer Saunders), Edward McNamara (Police Sgt. Brophy), James Gleason (Lt. Rooney), Grant Mitchell (Reverend Harper), Vaughan Glaser (Judge Cullman), Chester Clute (Dr. Gilchrist), Edward McWade (Mr. Gibbs), Garry Owen (cab driver), and Charles Lane (Reporter at Marriage License Office), Sol Gorss, Hank Mann, Spec O'Donnell, Lee Phelps, Leo White, and Jean Wong. The script is by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein. Music is by Max Steiner. Frank Capra directed this adaptation of Joseph Kesselring's hit Broadway play.
The play was such a smashing success on Broadway that it delayed the release of the film. It was made in 1941, but not released until September 23, 1944. This black farce is set-bound and ends rather abruptly, but it is one of the best madcap screwball comedies of all time. It is brilliant, frenetic, with non-stop action and comedy. Acting performances are perfect, there are lots of laughs mixed with creepiness, and it's one of the more sophisticated horror comedies.
In 1969 ARSENIC AND OLD LACE was remade as a TV movie with Bob Crane as Mortimer Brewster and Lilian Gish and Helen Hayes as the crazy aunts. This version is rarely watched and is very inferior to the original.
