"Arsenic and Old Lace" and Adaptation Theory in Multi-Modal Storytelling: The Second Movie Adaptation

1969 Movie Adaptation

 By far the most interesting adaptation I have seen, however, remains the 1969 version. Presented as a TV movie, it attempted to rejuvenate the story for a new audience.

     Elaine is no longer Reverend Harper’s daughter, instead her last name is Dodd, and she and Mortimer go on a date at a loud, flashy dance club. Mortimer is a television critic, and the jokes are adapted to suit this. The tone is much more comedic, and many jokes are made to the audience’s desensitization towards the theatrical violence being introduced to America via television becoming mainstream.

    Jonathan and the doctor are much more over-exaggerated and ineffective, and are far more physical than any other iteration, played up as a joke. One could even argue that the attitude change towards homosexuality, from frightening deviancy to something to be pitied and laughed at, is to blame for this. This is by far the quirkiest adaptation out there, and was definitely trying to find an audience in the younger generation, though to what rate of success I don’t know. Overall, I find it really interesting how these adaptations can show us a lot about the mode of storytelling used, and about the contexts of where and when it was made. Arsenic and Old Lace remains one of my favorite plays, movies, and radio shows up to this day.

Bibliography

    Schaefer, George. Hallmark Hall of Fame- Arsenic and Old Lace. NBC Television Network, 1969.

Kesselring, Joseph. Arsenic and Old Lace. Dramatists Play Services Inc., 1941

"Arsenic and Old Lace" and Adaptation Theory in Multi-Modal Storytelling: The Radio Adaptation

  1952 Radio Adaptation

   The 1959 radio play version is much more similar to the original play in many ways, and therefore there’s not as much to say about this interpretation. It has a significantly shorter runtime, less exaggerated slapstick and more fast-paced storytelling. It was presented as an episode of hour-long radio drama versions of Broadway plays, titled “Best Plays Presents”, and presents a much more condensed version of the original play.   

    The scenes of Mortimer visiting the judge and doctor are omitted, only referenced, as are many of the scenes with the policemen. Most of these adaptations are easily explainable as that of time constraints, although despite this, it remains one of the most faithful adaptations of the original play, with actors like Boris Karloff (Jonathan Brewster) and Jean Adair (Abby Brewster) vocally reprising their roles. 

Bibliography

Kesselring, Joseph. NBC's Best Plays, Episode Arsenic and Old Lace, NBC, 6 July 1952.

Kesselring, Joseph. Arsenic and Old Lace. Dramatists Play Services Inc., 1941

"Arsenic and Old Lace" and Adaptation Theory in Multi-Modal Storytelling: The First Movie Adaptation

1944 Movie Adaptation

The most well-known adaptation, the 1944 movie version, has some minor but significant differences from the play.

    For one, the bitter wartime humor and much of grandfather Brewster’s backstory is left out. It’s not too much extrapolation to say that this could be because of the shift in the civilian attitude of the current war as something winnable that had a coming end, rather than a grim perpetuity. Many of the characters are simplified, and much of the dark humor is gone, a change that could be contributed to a change in director from Bretaigne Windust to Frank Capra, or from scrutiny from the Hays Office, the moral code office of hollywood at the time (like Mortimer’s final line of “I’m a bastard!” being changed to “I’m the son of a sea cook!”).

    Some scenes were cut or shortened, most likely to keep the movie’s runtime under two hours. The largest change, however, was the movie’s shift from an ensemble cast to having a much stronger focus on Mortimer and Elaine’s romantic relationship, with both of their characterizations significantly altered. The movie gifts Mortimer with a strong distaste of marriage (which he quickly overcomes) absent in the play, and severely limits Elaine’s character from a worldly spitfire, to a much more placid girl-next-door.

    It is my belief that this adaptational choice also has to do with the larger societal context of the war for the time, in many ways, their own struggle mirrored that of many soldiers (some of who got to see the movie a month before its larger theatrical release) and their civilians at home: A happy domestic life is incredibly close to coming to fruition, but first they had to deal with trials and tribulations the likes of which they’d never seen, and do their best to be proper, ideal citizens while they did it. The civilian attitude of the war and the necessity of marriage had changed, and so the story had to change with it. However, an interesting thing to note about this slightly sanitized adaptation is that for all of it's scene cuts and word-mincing, the horror elements only alluded to in the play are highlighted. In a strangely sadistic scene, we watch as Jonathan snaps on black medical gloves, stroking his hand over a case of glinting surgical instruments as he looms over Mortimer, intricately tied to a chair. During the entry of the second world war, there was an uptick in noir films, a term given to the gritty and often violent crime dramas that gained immense popularity and signified the slow death of the Hays code, and the larger death of the cultural "innocence" before. America was seeing and hearing about war like never before, and in some ways, it made lasting changes in expanding what the public was normalized to seeing in world news.

Bibliography

Capra, Frank, director. Arsenic and Old Lace. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., 1944

Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: politics and American culture during WWII. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1976.

Kesselring, Joseph. Arsenic and Old Lace. Dramatists Play Services Inc., 1941. 96 pages, et al.

"Arsenic and Old Lace" and the adaptation theory in multi-modal storytelling, post series introduction

 Introduction

 Biological adaptation theory states that, when an organism finds itself in a new environment, over time, it or its descendants will physically change to better suit the new habitat. It’s my opinion that different adaptations of stories roughly do the same thing, only instead of an organism to a habitat, it’s a story, to not only a different mode of storytelling, but to the time and place it’s being changed in or for.

    A good example of a story with multiple adaptations that vary significantly depending on the version, is Arsenic and Old Lace. One of the longest running plays in Broadway history, it was a phenomenon when it was released in 1941, but written in 1939, and spawned multiple movies and radio adaptations. The synopsis goes as such: The Brewsters are a well-to-do Brooklyn family, made wealthy by a now-dead grandfather doctor, who apparently performed experiments on his patients. While having tea with the local reverend Doctor Harper, aging philanthropists Abby and Martha, and their mentally ill nephew Theodore “Teddy Roosevelt” Brewster, discuss their other nephew. A reluctant and thoroughly modern theater critic named Mortimer, who’s dating the reverend’s daughter, Elaine. They also discuss the annoyances of living in the current world war, with Abby making such remarks as “You know, reverend, I’m beginning to think this Hitler fellow isn’t very christian.” The reverend leaves, and Mortimer makes a visit to his brother and aunties on his way to pick up Elaine. While there, Mortimer discovers a dead body. Naturally, he immediately informs his aunts, who tell him not to worry as, “he’s one of our gentlemen!”. As it turns out, the aunts murder old men as a form of charity. Not wanting his aunties to hang, Mortimer devises a solution: he’ll forcibly institutionalize his brother and pin the crimes on him. While there’s a lot to unpack there, it gets worse. While out getting papers signed, who should come home but the third brother, “criminally insane” Jonathan Brewster, accompanied by Herman Einstein, his personal plastic surgeon, who affectionately calls him “Johnny”. Now with two pairs of murderers in the house, it’s up to Mortimer to keep the body count low and his fiancee from knowing.

Boris Karloff as Jonathan Brewster

    The largest thing to call attention to in the original play, however, is how the American civilian attitude of reluctance towards involvement with the world war at the time, shines through in the comedy. Not much had to be changed when it debuted on Broadway after the U.S. became involved, if anything, it can almost be compared to modern "pre-covid" humor, laughing at the first-world problems that seemed so serious in a simpler time.

In this series of posts, I’ll be going through each adaptation and describing what went into each change and speculating as to why through analyzing the contexts of the era when each was released. This play has always been one of my favorites, and as someone with an interest in both media analysis and history, this project felt like a natural progression. The original play, in both plot and tone, will be used as a control group, as it came first and therefore all the other adaptations will be compared to it.

Bibliography

Kesselring, Joseph. Arsenic and Old Lace. Dramatists Play Service Inc.1941. Page count 96, et al.

    
Blum, John Morton. V was for victory: Politics and American culture during World War II. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1976.