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Film 973: Arsenic and Old Lace

Trivia: Cary Grant donated his entire salary, $100,000, to the U.S. War Relief Fund.

Ronald Reagan and Jack Benny were offered the role of Mortimer Brewster, but turned it down. Bob Hope was offered the part and was eager to do it but Paramount Pictures refused to loan him out to Warner Bros. for the project.

Cary Grant considered his acting in this film to be horribly over the top and often called it his least favorite of all his movies.

On stage, Boris Karloff played the monstrous Jonathan Brewster, Raymond Massey's film character, who, in eerie-looking screen makeup, resembled Karloff, which was a running gag throughout the picture. Because Karloff was still appearing in the Broadway play during the film's production, he was unable to do the picture.

When Mortimer is sitting in the graveyard, one of the tombstones has the name Archie Leach on it. Archie Leach is Cary Grant's real name.

Jonathan describes one of his killings and Dr. Einstein says "You can't count him. He died of pneumonia," then Jonathan replies "He wouldn't have died of pneumonia if I hadn't shot him." This connects to the United States Presidents theme in the film. In 1881, President James Garfield was shot by a drifter named Charles Guiteau. Garfield recovered from the wound, only to catch pneumonia from tainted surgical tools, and died 79 days after the shooting. Guiteau's courtroom defense was that Garfield died of pneumonia; the verdict was, in effect, that Garfield wouldn't have died of pneumonia if Guiteau hadn't shot him. Guiteau was sent to the execution dock in 1882.