Arsenic and Old Lace in Golden Age Horror Forum

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Arsenic and Old Lace

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will		#41	[-]
Aug 14 10 9:24 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hmmm, sidebar: Re-imagine NORTH BY NORTHWEST as a comedy...you really wouldn't have to change the plot at all. It is a comedy. A comic thriller. Grant is wrong in Arsenic and Old Lace because Mortimer Brewster is supposed to be reactive and he is acting crazier than any of his relatives, But it isn't Grant's fault. He is very capable of playing it properly but Capra's direction and the script makes him the comic focal point and throws the movie off balance, It is not a disaster but the frenetic attempts to be zany makes the comedy very heavy handed and tiresome. Compare it to Murder He Said where George Marshall gets the tone right and Fred MacMurray never goes over the top the way Grant does.
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Don Glut		#42	[-]
Aug 14 10 11:37 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'll never forget the Fred Gwynne line. In close up, he said, "He said I looked like the Frankenstein Monster."
jplibby		#43	[-]
Aug 15 10 9:08 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Don Glut wrote: I'll never forget the Fred Gwynne line. In close up, he said, "He said I looked like the Frankenstein Monster." That version of the line doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it?
Don Glut		#44	[-]
Aug 15 10 10:40 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	No, it sure didn't. No impact at all, in my opinion, and nothing funny about it. He might as well have said, "He said I looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon." Saying "Herman Munster" or "Fred Gwynne" might have been funny, who can say? I was fortunate enough to have seen Karloff in both of his TV appearances in A&OL, but I was probably too young to really appreciate it (at least the earlier presentation). Luckily a number of his radio versions are extant and available.
telegonus	An Addams Family Arsenic and Old Lace?	#45	[-]
Aug 15 10 11:33 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I saw the first part of the Arsenic and Old Lace that featured Fred Gwynne as Jonathan and thought if was awful. The play is a period piece, almost impossible to update. They could pull if off as contemporary in the 50s but after a certain point it fails to work, what with the super-gentility of the aunts, the long gone old Brooklyn. With good direction I can imagine Bob Crane making a decent Mortimer Brewster. Fred Gwynne is an actor I've never liked, have always found him painfully unfunny and unbelievable in everything I've ever seen in him. Tall as he was there was something innately unthreatening about him. On the other hand, I can see an Addams Family-inspired A&OL. John Astin's a maybe for Mortimer, could certainly play Teddy, as could Jackie Coogan's uncle Fester. Ted Cassidy could play Jonathan ("they said I looked like Lurch"). It might have actually worked had it been done around the same time as the TV show or just a year or two later. I've often wondered if Chas Addams was influenced by the play,--or maybe it was the other way around. There's a New Yorker cartoon quality to it, but maybe that wasn't there when it premiered in 1941. There was A Charlie Brown Christmas, why not a Halloween An Addams Family Arsenic and Old Lace?
will		#46	[-]
Aug 15 10 1:05 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Arsenic and Old lace wasn't influenced by the Addams Family cartoons because of how it came to be. It was originally a straight play submitted to the producing/ writing team of Howard Lindsey and Russel Crouse, They told the first time playwrite to rewrite it as a comedy and it is rumored extensively rewrote it as well.
Don Glut		#47	[-]
Aug 15 10 1:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	For what it's worth, back in the late 1970s I wrote a script titled "Arsenic and Aunt May" for the old Bashki SPIDER-MAN TV-cartoon show. When the series was reissued they needed some some episodes to fill out the run, and this was one of them. But the storyline had almost nothing -- if anything, other than the tite -- to do with AAOL.
Gram Owens		#48	[-]
Aug 15 10 6:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I saw a production of ARSENIC at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, around 1995 or so. Jonathan was played by Paul Benedict (Mr. Bentley on THE JEFFERSONS). Joanne Woodward portrayed Abby, and at the end of the show, when the twelve "corpses" march out of the basement, one of them was Paul Newman. From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it -- Groucho Marx
Jendrew		#49	[-]
Aug 15 10 6:58 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I love the whole look of the film, title sequence included, which screams 'classic hween'. The first hour is great. After that, it's kind of a butt burner.. Grant is very good in an over the top kinda way, but get's a bit insufferable after a while..IMO.
monsterfan		#50	[-]
Aug 15 10 7:30 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	telegonus said I've often wondered if Chas Addams was influenced by the play,--or maybe it was the other way around. There's a New Yorker cartoon quality to it, but maybe that wasn't there when it premiered in 1941. There was A Charlie Brown Christmas, why not a Halloween An Addams Family Arsenic and Old Lace? I think it's possible that Addams was influenced by the play. Boris admired Addams' work and in mid '42 wrote a forward to his "Drawn and Quartered". Addams surely saw the play.
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LesDaniels		#51	[-]
Aug 15 10 9:08 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Addams was doing those weird cartoons for The New Yorker well before 1942. The butler in the household later known as "The Addams Family" was based on Karloff's portrayal of the Frankenstein monster, and that's why Boris wrote that bit for the first collection of Addams cartoons.
jplibby		#52	[-]
Aug 15 10 10:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Gram Owens wrote: I saw a production of ARSENIC at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, around 1995 or so. Jonathan was played by Paul Benedict (Mr. Bentley on THE JEFFERSONS). Joanne Woodward portrayed Abby, and at the end of the show, when the twelve "corpses" march out of the basement, one of them was Paul Newman. That's awesome about Paul Newman's gag appearance! Sounds like a great part for Benedict; he has a somewhat Karloffian profile.
Gram Owens		#53	[-]
Aug 15 10 10:57 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	jplibby wrote: That's awesome about Paul Newman's gag appearance! Sounds like a great part for Benedict; he has a somewhat Karloffian profile. Benedict did quite well in the role. He was physically intimidating, and had great comedic timing. And of course the Newman appearance was totally unexpected. A group of "old men" emerging from the cellar...one of them looking VERY familiar... From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it -- Groucho Marx
Wich2		#54	[-]
Aug 15 10 11:01 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"Grant is wrong in Arsenic and Old Lace because Mortimer Brewster is supposed to be reactive and he is acting crazier than any of his relatives, But it isn't Grant's fault. He is very capable of playing it properly but Capra's direction and the script makes him the comic focal point and throws the movie off balance" Bull's-eye, will.
FrozenGhost		#55	[-]
Aug 16 10 7:22 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In Frank Capra's autobiography there was an on-the-set still showing a rather testy-looking Grant being directed by Capra. The caption read: "This had better be funny, chum!" "Yes, Mr. Grant!" Grant himself considered it his worst performance.
will		#56	[-]
Aug 16 10 1:03 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I thought I would throw this in. I'm not too fond of Raymond Massey in the picture. It is a good performance on its own terms, but it doesn't fit the movie. It's a rather serious performance and the flat Midwestern accent he chooses is out of sync with the rest of the family. Even Grant's quasi-British accent is closer to the aunties and TR. Massey was an incredible unappreciated actor, one of the first chameleon actors who could get lost in a role and was very unpredictable, but I think if he played this closer to himself it would have been better. His own natural voice is closer to Karloff than the one he used.
telegonus		#57	[-]
Aug 16 10 1:53 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The TV series The Addams Family was like a weekly sitcom version of A&OL but without the twelve bodies in the cellar. The Lurch-Karloff connection is something I actually hadn't given much thought to till now. Sort of obvious now that I think about it. The other "horror sitcom" from the same year, interestingly, used a Lugosi-Dracula character in Al Lewis. Truly, both shows were like the children of Shock Theater, almost certainly wouldn't have been made had it not been for that horror showcase that had proved so popular over the previous seven or eight years. Forry deserves more than a little credit for them as well.
TomWeaver999		#58	[-]
Aug 16 10 5:16 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	http://www.nydailynews.co...o_arsenic__old_lace.html
will		#59	[-]
Aug 16 10 7:37 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks for the link, Tom. That old lady has a strong resemblance to Ellen Corby during the Walton years. Last Edited By: will Aug 16 10 9:29 PM. Edited 2 times.
clore103051		#60	[-]
Aug 16 10 9:15 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	telegonus wrote: Forry deserves more than a little credit for them as well. For as long as the show was on CBS. there was an article on THE MUNSTERS in just about every issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS and its companion MONSTER WORLD.
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