The great director Frank Capra was well known for his whimsical, bright, and intelligent films. They were often filled with some of the biggest leading men of the time such as Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable, but it was for a film called Arsenic And Old Lace that he made two of the wisest casting choices of his career. The movie follows Brooklyn’s most notorious bachelor, Mortimer Brewster, coming home to his two dear aunts to announce he has eloped with the girl next door. The celebration is quickly put on the back burner when Mortimer finds a dead body in the window seat and his long-lost fugitive brother Jonathan appears with his plastic surgeon and a corpse of his own.
While the entire movie is perfectly cast, the masterstroke is in the choices of Jean Adair and Josephine Hull as Mortimer’s Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby, respectively. Both women carry a vibrant charm rarely found in cinema. Together they create two elderly sisters so sweet and engaging that their sinister deeds never create an air of incredibility. They so rightly believe they are doing a great justice that you love them and care for them despite their actions. If the film was remade today, you would have a hell of a time finding two actresses capable of never seeming dangerous or evil in the midst of their plot. Watching the film as I child I yearned for such sweet, wonderful women in my life, even if they happened to be serial killers. When I viewed the film in a theater with my mom on Halloween in 2005, I felt like the loony old gals had become a part of my family, having been there in my youth and still to this day. It’s a marvelous feeling that is sadly not felt enough.
Throughout their careers, both Adair and Hull only acted in a handful of films, focusing most of their time on the stage and I can’t help but think of what a shame that is. While I have nothing against the theater at all, there’s no possible way for me to view their work from the twenties and thirties, no time capsule for future generations to experience their art. To think of how often we could’ve seen these two women brightening our movie theater and television screens is heartbreaking. Why were these two immense talents never given more chances to fill our movie experiences with the joy and laughter they were more than capable of providing? Did the film industry miss out on the first female comedy duo whose natural gift for their work is so rare? Of course, these questions can never be answered, but in a way, their notable absence from the movies makes Arsenic And Old Lace all the more important.
On Adair - After Mortimer first discovers the dead body in the window seat, he believes his Uncle Teddy (who believes he is actually Teddy Roosevelt) has killed the man and hidden him in the seat. Upon hearing this scenario, Aunt Martha informs him she knows of the body and that Teddy would never kill a man. When Mortimer asks what happened to the man, she cheerfully replies, “He died.” The cheerfully morbid delivery of this line flows so naturally from Adair she shows how she could hold her own against the most talented of comedians, male or female, living or dead.
On Hull - When Mortimer is questioning his aunts’ involvement in the death of the man in the window seat, Hull becomes offended by his refusal to believe that what she is telling him is truthful. Finally having enough with her nephew’s antics, she stops what she’s doing and proclaims, “You don’t think I’d stoop to telling a fib!” and scuttles out of the room, hurt that her nephew won’t believe she is capable of murder. The delivery is funny, furious and even a little sad.
If you haven’t seen Arsenic And Old Lace, please, drop whatever it is you are doing, rent it, netflix it, DVR it, obtain it by any means possible, then sit down relax and be whisked away by the two sweetest mass murderers you will ever meet.
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