Arsenic & Old lAce - Center Stage

Next Stage Resource Guide
Arsenic &
Old Lace
by Joseph Kesselring
Directed by Irene Lewis
Sep 14–Oct 14, 2007
The Pearlstone Theater

Irene Lewis Artistic Director
Michael Ross Managing Director
Contents
Setting the Stage 3
Cast/Setting 4
Joseph Otto Kesselring 4
The Beamish Ones
Meet the Monster 5
Sharpen Your Knives… 6
Brooklyn 8
Blood-Thirsty Laughter
and Comic Chills 10
glossary 12
Bibliography 16
Arsenic & Old Lace
by Joseph Kesselring
Irene Lewis Director
Tony Straiges Scenic Designer
Wade Laboissonniere Costume Designer
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and Actors’ Equity Association,
the union of professional actors
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United States.
Jeff Nellis Lighting Designer
Ryan Rumery Sound Designer
J. Allen Suddeth Fight Director
Michael J. Bobbitt Choreographer
Deena Burke Dialect Coach
Lawrence J. Cione Music Consultant
Gavin Witt Production Dramaturg
Janet Foster Casting Director
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Arsenic & Old Lace is presented
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Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

Set ting the STage
Arsenic & Old Lace
by Shannon M. Davis, New Media Manager
Characters:
The Brewster Family…
Abby and Martha Brewster, two elderly spinsters
Their nephews:
Mortimer, a theater critic
Teddy, a.k.a. Teddy Roosevelt
Jonathan, a serial killer
…and Friends:
Elaine Harper, Mortimer’s sweetheart
Reverend Harper, her father
Dr. Einstein, Jonathan’s sidekick in crime
Mr. Gibbs, a would-be tenant
Lieutenant Rooney, Officer Klein, and Officer O’Hara, the local police force
Mr. Witherspoon, superintendent of Happy Dale Sanitarium
Setting:
The living room of the Brewster home in Brooklyn, September 1941.
New York is hectic on the eve of World War II, but in the stately Brewster home, Victorian
manners are still in fashion. Abby and Martha Brewster, ladies of refinement, take pride in
having even the most casual guest to tea in their parlor; and if that guest should expire, the
window seat provides for impromptu storage. But it’s not the tea that does it—when spiked with their
signature blend of arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide, tea “has a distinct odor,” Martha explains to her
distraught nephew Mortimer. No, it’s the Brewster sisters’ homemade elderberry wine that conceals
the taste of the poison and sends lonely gentlemen callers (12, so far) into the hereafter—and the cellar,
where enthusiastic nephew Teddy channels President Roosevelt by digging a new lock for the Panama
Canal as a final resting place.
What’s poor Mortimer to do? His sweetheart’s on her way over and his aunts have a disconcerting
habit of murdering visitors. But his problems are just beginning: his black-sheep brother Jonathan
turns up on the lam, with crooked plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein and another dead body in tow. With
Grandfather Brewster’s laboratory upstairs—the old man “always used to have a cadaver or two around
the house”—Jonathan’s convinced that his childhood home is the perfect place to set up operations.
The first order of business? Re-do his face, which Einstein drunkenly carved into the spitting image of
Frankenstein actor Boris Karloff. With two fresh bodies and only one empty grave in the basement, the
sleepy Brewster house gets pretty crowded, even before the police show up to discuss the finer points
of playwriting with Mortimer.
The comic mayhem of Arsenic & Old Lace, Joseph Kesselring’s most famous play, has made it a true
classic. Much like Abby and Martha’s secret recipe, the combination of screwball comedy and gothic
chills is a potent mix, sure to send a few delicious shivers up your spine—but don’t worry, we promise
you won’t die laughing.
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

The Cast
(in order of appearance)
John Ahlin*
Teddy Brewster
Pamela Payton-Wright*
Abby Brewster
Stephen F. Schmidt*
Reverend Harper
William Zielinski*
Officer Klein
Tana Hicken*
Martha Brewster
Brynn O’Malley*
Elaine Harper
Ian Kahn*
Mortimer Brewster
Ralph Cosham*
Mr. Gibbs/Mr. Witherspoon
John Campion*
Jonathan Brewster
Carson Elrod*
Dr. Einstein
Lou Liberatore*
Officer O’Hara
Craig Bockhorn*
Lt. Rooney
Mike Schleifer*
Stage Manager
Caitlin McAndrews*
Assistant Stage Manager
Setting
The living room of the Brewster
home in Brooklyn.
September, 1941.
There will be one
15-minute intermission.
Joseph Otto
Kesselring
(1902–1967)
by Gavin Witt,
Production Dramaturg
Little in the life of Joseph Otto
Kesselring gave any indication that
his would be one of the lasting
names in American drama. In fact, to
this day, little more than his name
endures, honored in an annual prize for
playwrights. That, and his (ironically)
immortal comedy, Arsenic and Old
Lace. Even the ultimate success of this
now-established play was among the
unlikeliest of eventualities, but for a few
fortunate twists and some great timing.
Kesselring was born in 1902, in the
relative anonymity of New York City.
At 20, the young city slicker went to
the small Mennonite community of
Newton, Kansas, to join the faculty at
Bethel College. A one-time boy soprano,
he taught music and directed student
productions—and lived in a sprawling
Victorian rooming house that would
loom large in his later career.
After only a few years at Bethel,
Kesselring left the safety of academia
to strike out on his own in theater.
After trying his hand as a writer and
actor, he also spent time producing
vaudeville. Mild, Republican,
Episcopalian Kesselring was about the
least likely vaudevillian imaginable. Yet
he did manage to get some of his own
work produced, first in 1933 and again in
1935, with two light romantic comedies.
Response, though, was tepid and the
pieces were quickly forgotten.
Kesselring seemed headed for certain
obscurity when he sent another offering
to the actor, director, and producer
Howard Lindsay, fresh from his epochal
success in Life With Father. The new
play, a thriller-melodrama titled Bodies
in Our Cellar, became Arsenic and Old
Lace—with more than a little help
from some seasoned Broadway vets
(see “The Beamish Ones Meet the
Monster”). Kesselring became the
toast of Broadway and a theatrical
milestone. Or his play did, at any rate;
even at the height of his success,
Kesselring himself seems to have
remained a complete cipher.
For the setting of his signature work,
Kesselring drew on the interior of his
old Bethel College quarters, Goerz
House—particularly its distinctive
window seat. Mortimer’s aunts, the
Brewster sisters, he apparently based
on his own relations; for their antics, he
said that he simply “imagined the most
fantastically impossible thing[s] his dear
old grandmother could do,” then wrote
those down. Whatever else he may have
lacked as a writer, imagination he had.
Kesselring continued writing until
1963, but nothing managed to win the
plaudits he achieved with Arsenic and
Old Lace. In lieu of an autobiography,
he published a collection of his poetry,
mostly light verse, that he called My
Life, Love, and Limericks. He died in 1967;
his widow, Charlotte—whom he had
married in 1931—eventually endowed a
playwriting prize in his name and honor:
the Kesselring Prize. X
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the Beamish Ones
meet the
by Kathryn Van Winkle,
The Mike & Beth Falcone
Dramaturgy Fellow
Joseph Kesselring’s success
rests on one fateful trip to
the post office. The aspiring
playwright mailed a copy of his
newest play to Howard Lindsay,
one half of the madcap writing
and producing duo Lindsay and Crouse.
Known as “The Beamish Ones,” they’re
credited with the books for Anything
Goes and The Sound of Music, as well
as the plays Life With Father, Life With
Mother, and the Pulitzer-winning State
of the Union.
Lindsay saw the possibilities inherent
in this insanely macabre farce and
wired [Crouse]. The wire read: “Shake
your head, take a cup of coffee and
read further. Have just read a play
about two charming old ladies who go
around murdering old men. Very funny.
How would you like to be a producer?”
[Crouse] wired back, “Buy it.” The
two…all but rewrote everything, [b]ut
they were careful to give full credit at
all times to Kesselring.
—from Life With Lindsay & Crouse,
by Cornelia Otis Skinner
For “the dangerously insane brother
with a record of homicides who has
had his face lifted to resemble Boris
Karloff,” the duo had the inspired idea
to ask none other than Karloff himself. A
veteran of countless horror flicks, Karloff
was a walking legend for his iconic
performance as the Monster in the 1931
Frankenstein. He was also painfully shy.
Crouse called [Karloff and] said, “Boris,
there’s a play Howard and I want you
to do in New York.” Boris replied that
he was flattered, but wouldn’t consider
it for a moment. “I am a provincial
actor,” he said…, “and provincial actors
no more than film actors belong on
Broadway.”
“But this is a very special kind of play,”
Crouse said.
“I don’t care how special it is,” Boris
replied. “And being yours, I’m sure it is
special—I just wouldn’t consider doing
a play unless there were at least three
parts more important than mine. The
responsibility…is too much for me.”
“You’re on,” said Crouse. “There are
exactly three parts more important
than yours.”
“Now, you interest me—tell me about
the part.”
[When they did,] Boris guffawed,
and was so enchanted by the idea of
making fun of himself that he agreed
to do the play. The rest, as they say, is
theater history.
—from Dear Boris: The Life of William Henry
Pratt a.k.a. Boris Karloff, by Cynthia Lindsay
After successfully trying out in Baltimore,
Arsenic and Old Lace opened in New York
on January 10, 1941 and was an overnight
smash. The play ran in New York for
1,444 performances and in London for
1,337. Touring companies followed, and
in 1944 the Frank Capra film. The original
investors made a bundle.
Within eleven days [of opening] the
first check went out to the backers….
Further letters came each month,
opening with “Dear Little Cherub”
or “You Lucky Stiff” or “You Money-
Mad People.” Lindsay
also enclosed a news
bulletin:
All right, if you
want news I can
give it to you. We
have a Chicago
company in rehearsal
with Erich Von Stroheim
in the lead. We wanted
Al Capone, but couldn’t afford
to pay his back taxes. [I]f it comes
to our ears that you have any
objections to the way this office is
being operated, we will be glad to
send you, free of charge, one bottle
of Aunt Martha’s elderberry wine.
[Lindsay and Crouse] loved Karloff,
but were constantly amused by
his parsimony, and delighted in
teasing him about it. Karloff’s
weekly salary was over $2,000. One
time the “Beamish Ones” arranged
to have this sum delivered to him
entirely in nickels. Karloff took it all
in good humor, and playing along
with them he suddenly threatened
to resign from the show, declaring it
an outrage that he was forced to pay
for his own make-up and forthwith
demanding an immediate allowance
for powder. A few nights later
the management came into his
dressing room bearing a large box
done up like a Christmas present
from Bergdorf Goodman. Karloff
untied the ribbons, opened the box
with justified caution and found
that the contents consisted of tooth
powder, foot powder, baking powder,
roach powder, gun powder, …and
powdered eggs.
—from Life With Lindsay & Crouse,
by Cornelia Otis Skinner X
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

Sharpen
Your
by Gavin Witt,
Production Dramaturg
Though his aunts, and more so his
future father-in-law, disapprove
of his current calling—come to
think of it, he’s hardly thrilled himself—
he’s managed to land himself a position
with some authority and considerable
social cachet. He’s Mortimer Brewster,
Drama Critic.
In the Big Apple of 1941, writers of
every stripe and attitude populate
the bountiful pages of a veritable
cornucopia of media outlets: multiple
daily papers, not to mention magazines
and journals and other periodicals,
litter the landscape (see below). When
not actually at the seemingly scads
of openings each season, the
critics—a pretty staid
bunch, all told—can be found holding
forth (or a fifth, more likely) around
town. As lately as 1940, wit and critic
Alexander Woollcott, a stalwart of the
theater pages and a mainstay of the
acerbic circle of the Algonquin Round
Table, even appeared, essentially as
himself, in the acclaimed Kaufman
and Hart farrago The Man Who Came
to Dinner.
Figures like Woollcott and Brooks
Atkinson and Burns Mantle are nearly
legendary by 1941, and their carefully
honed utterances can make or break
careers. Legions of colleagues, rivals,
and cheap imitators are many. No
neutral objectivity for these arbiters
of taste; they tell it how they feel it,
sometimes without even having to
see the performance, and woe betide
the actor, writer, director, or play that
earns their ire. Of course, Mortimer was
apparently far happier back writing
about real estate—and there is that
book about Thoreau he’s been working
on…. His family seems confident that
theater as a whole is teetering on its
last legs; maybe 1945 will see the last
of Broadway. And good riddance too,
they’re ready to say. Meantime, though,
the Fabulous Invalid clings to life.
A Rogues Gallery
In 1939, Time pulled back the
curtain on the New York Critics Circle,
profiling some of its charter members:
Slight, bespectacled Brooks Atkinson
(Times), a reserved, dryly humorous
Yankee who writes books on travel and
Thoreau. As the Times’s critic, he has by
far the greatest single influence on box
office. Cultivated, impishly able to carve
a “turkey” with the best of them, he is
now and then a sucker for high-toned
emptiness, sometimes recoils from the
sweaty and disagreeable.
Moonfaced, blue-shirted Richard Watts,
Jr. (Herald Tribune), was formerly the
H. T.’s cinema critic. Boyish (Broadway’s
loudest heigh-hoer of good-looking
actresses), he is also thoughtful
(Broadway’s briskest champion
of social-minded plays). Often
acute, Watts chiefly errs in being too
rhapsodic about what he likes.
Tall, dashing John Anderson (Journal
& American) is Broadway’s supreme
critic of bad plays, with a great gift for
wisecracking down on them. (“[Jeremiah]
may be entered…as prophet and loss.”).
Though murderous with fanciness and
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

In the weeks following the 1941 New York premiere of Arsenic and Old Lace,
a series of mysteries and thrillers debuted on Broadway to considerably
less enthusiasm—earning them some choice and characteristic responses
from the critical choir. X
The Lady Who Came To Stay
Brooks Atkinson. New York Times,
January 3, 1941.
Eight O’Clock Tuesday
John Mason Brown. New York Post,
January 7, 1941.
McKay Morris was never more dead in
his life than when the curtain went up at
Henry Miller’s Theatre last night. There
he was stretched out on the floor of his
shadowy suburban library with a paper
knife thrust far into him, a man who had
breathed his last, the mortal remains of
Ivan Godden, a wretch who can be more
accurately identified as Ivan the Terrible.
But did Mr. Morris stay put? He did not.
Most assuredly he did not. Things like
that don’t happen in the theatre, at least
to such actors as Mr. Morris.
Brooks Atkinson. New York Times,
January 7, 1941.
When the curtain rises on the detective
drama…the corpse is already on the
floor. He is soon decently covered with
a blanket, although you can see the
blanket rise and fall, rise and fall with
the regularity of breathing—always a
nerve-wracking blemish in the acting of
corpses.
John Anderson. New York Journal
and American, January 7, 1941.
Inspector Wait grills [everyone] modestly
and gets them slowly but surely to tell
on one another and on themselves. At
the end, we know who killed poor Ivan,
even if we no longer care, and the one
bright promise of the evening is the
inspector’s assurance, at the very end,
that, hereafter, he’s going back to the old
methods of clues and fingerprints and
who was that alibi I saw you with at four
minutes past whatyoumaycallit.
First Stop to Heaven
Richard Lockridge. New York Sun,
January 6, 1941.
A number of intolerably quaint people
performed strange antics last evening at
the Windsor Theater. Mail carriers quoted
poetry, policemen distractedly wished
themselves back in Central Park, and a
building inspector, frenzied at finding
himself in so odd a gathering, twice fell
down a flight of stairs. This department
shared the inspector’s emotions, but was
denied his release.
Mr. and Mrs. North
Louis Kronenberger. New York
Newspaper “PM,” January 13, 1941.
After the drenching and lunatic laughter
of “Arsenic and Old Lace”, with its two
dozen variegated murders, “Mr. and Mrs.
North” cannot help seeming a touch
prosaic. Its mere brace of homicides seem,
by comparison, just routine incidents in
any nice young couple’s daily existence.
Sidney B. Whipple. New York World-
Telegram, January 13, 1941.
Mr. Davis’ play suffers, I think, from
the circumstances of its being the third
of a cycle of murder plays to arrive
in hurried sequence on Broadway, and
particularly from having followed the
cheerfully gruesome “Arsenic and Old
Lace” with its homicides in wholesale
lots. But if it lacks the comic impact of
that murder epidemic, it gains a great
deal in the understanding and charming
portraits of [its chief characters], the
Norths. In other words, I find the North
family more interesting and real…than
I do the strange situation into which the
authors have thrown them.
They are doing the best they can to
scare the innocent theatergoer at Maxine
Elliott’s Theatre. Using an old ghost
story…as his sourcebook, Kenneth White
has written a nightmare and Guthrie
McClintic has directed and produced
it as if he believed in it. [….] But if
he thinks that “The Lady Who Came
To Stay” is worth all the hard work
and skill that a good theatre production
requires, this column will have to beg to
be excused. It is a silly, maudlin piece of
willful adolescence that seems especially
malapropos in the modern world.
John Anderson. New York Journal and
American, January 3, 1941.
“The Lady Who Came To Stay”…is a
pretty depressing and somewhat sadistic
exercise in spook-a-boo drama by Kenneth
White designed to induce shudders and
chills. Instead, it merely left me cold, so
cold in fact that the sleety street seemed
a welcome relief.
John Mason Brown. New York Post,
January 3, 1941.
“The owly-hoots are out tonight” says Mrs.
Tuddlewinks in the nursery rhyme. And
so they were—in droves—at the Maxine
Elliott last night. For there…was…a ghostridden
melodrama by Kenneth White…in
which the three weirdest sisters known
to the drama since “Macbeth” died off
one by one and, by refusing to stay put,
kept more than their graves yawning
for the major portion of a silly
evening.
fake, he is sometimes too clever and
cynical at the expense of a serious play.
Tall, curly-haired John Mason Brown (Post)
is the youngest of the newspaper critics.
Probably the ablest all-round of the
lot, he combines journalistic dash with
analytical skill. With Anderson, he has the
highest critical boiling point.
Kindly, near-sighted Burns Mantle (News)
is, at 65, the oldest of the newspaper
critics. Nationally known for his annual
The Best Plays of 19—, he is often
sound, almost always dull. His best
advertisement is his trick of rating plays
by stars.
Slight, professorial Richard Lockridge
(Sun) is intelligent, fluent, sometimes
astute, curiously colorless.
Small, thin Sidney B. Whipple (World-
Telegram), Broadway’s newest critic,
wrote a life of Charles M. Schwab
which will remain locked in a
safe until Schwab dies. A
polysyllabic Pollyanna,
Whipple likes good
clean fun, loves good
clean seriousness,
is Broadway’s
defender of the
family, the fireside,
the flag.
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

Compiled by Kathryn Van Winkle, The Mike & Beth Falcone Dramaturgy
Transformation
Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha grew up
in an independent Brooklyn yet to
be incorporated with Manhattan.
Theirs was a neighborhood
of prim houses and Gothic
churches built in the
early 19 th Century:
Walt Whitman’s
“City of Homes and
Churches.” By 1941, their
snug enclave of Yankee
respectability and aristocratic
charity had nearly succumbed
to the encroachment of greater
Brooklyn and its riotous hustleand-bustle
of immigrant families,
bohemian artists, and the notorious
crime families that easily beat the
Brewsters’ collective homicide
record.
Timeline
Brooklyn, 1939–1941
Population: 2,968,285
1939: In the first-ever televised major
league game, the Brooklyn
Dodgers lose to the Cardinals at
Ebbets Field.
1940: The house at 7 Middagh Street in
Brooklyn Heights becomes a salon
for artistic luminaries including
Carson McCullers, W.H. Auden,
Paul and Sally Bowles, Richard
Wright, Oliver Smith, Aaron
Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Marc
Blitzstein, Anaïs Nin, Gypsy Rose
Lee, and Salvador Dalí.
1941: Coney Island Jump 1: Mobster Abe
“Kid Twist” Reles rats out Murder
Inc., then dies in a “fall” from a
Half-Moon Hotel window.
Coney Island Jump 2: The
Parachute Jump from the 1939
New York World’s Fair becomes a
crowd favorite.
Taunts
“…just before World War II…a Brooklynite
named Sid Ascher and some friends
formed the Society for the Prevention of
Disparaging Remarks Against Brooklyn
as a gag. But by 1946 it claimed forty
thousand members who, during that
year alone, tallied three thousand
slanders of Brooklyn in the media.”
—Elliot Willensky, When Brooklyn Was
the World, 1920–1957
“I was born in Brooklyn.”
“What part?”
“All of me.”
A cabbie has the ball game on the radio
when a passenger gets in.
Passenger: How’re the Dodgers doing?
Cabbie: They got three men on base.
Passenger: Which base?
Army doctor: Where are you from, son?
Recruit: Brooklyn.
Doc: Any other defects?
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

“One of the longest journeys in the world is
the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan—
or at least from certain neighborhoods in
Brooklyn to certain parts of Manhattan.
”
—Norman Podhoretz, Making It
Tribute
“I sing of Brooklyn, the fruited plain,
cradle of genius and stand-up
comedy, awash in history, relics
of Indian mounds, Dutch farms,
Revolutionary War battles, breweries
and baseball…Brooklyn likes a
beautiful loser. Perhaps the defining
loss was municipal identity: in
1898, when corpulent Brooklyn was
the third-largest metropolis in the
country, it amalgamated with spindly
Manhattan…to form our modern New
York City…. Having relinquished its
municipal birthright, [Brooklyn] haunts
the island like a doppelganger, or a
conscience. Manhattan is the tower,
Brooklyn the garden. Manhattan is
Faustian will, Brooklyn is domestic
life. Manhattan preens, disseminates
opinions; Brooklyn is Uncle Vanya
schlepping in the background to
support his peacock relative.”
—Phillip Lopate,
Brooklyn: A State of Mind
Aunt Martha’s Elderberry Wine
Collect four pounds of elderberries into a large basin. Resist
temptation: the berries, while raw, are mildly poisonous. Add
eight ounces of chopped raisins, the juice of one lemon
and one orange, and a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. An egg
white, beaten to a meringue and broken into bits, will do just
as nicely. Stir in a gallon of boiling water. After the mixture
cools, squeeze the fruit by hand to extract the juice. Let
the liquid infuse for one day, and then add two and a half
pounds of sugar and a claret yeast sachet. Cover the basin,
and leave it alone for three days. Strain the liquid into two
large glass jugs, and top up each with another quarterpound
of sugar. Let them ferment in a warm, dark place.
When the bubbling has subsided, strain the dead yeast out
into a clean jug, and repeat in six weeks. The wine will be
ready to bottle when it appears clear. Shine a light through
the jugs to check. Let the wine mature in bottles for at
least six months before serving.
Season to taste.
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace |

y Gavin Witt,
Production Dramaturg
“When are playwrights going
to use some imagination?”
—Mortimer Brewster, Arsenic and Old Lace
In Arsenic and Old Lace, Kesselring
(with his collaborators, Lindsay
and Crouse) created a potent
combination—and not just the wicked
Brewster Brew. At once whimsical spoof
and transcendent manifestation of its
genre, his morbid mystery has since
its debut won over legions of critics
and audiences alike with its distinctive
blend of the madcap and the macabre.
Kesselring drew from a range of
influences, and in doing so blazed a new
trail for other works and writers to come,
in as diverse an array of styles and forms
as one could imagine.
In his career-making play, Kesselring
blithely mixed the foundations of farce
and screwball comedy from Feydeau to
Kaufman and Hart—full of rapid-fire
entrances and exits, and the inevitable
untimely entrance of the inopportune
visitor—with the spooky features of
the pulp detective tales then popular
in dime novels, radio serials, true crime
magazines, and film. He reached back,
too, to Gothic horror fiction: shuddering
tales of dark old houses hiding terrible
secrets as told by Edgar Allen Poe and
Sheridan La Fanu, or as in more recent
favorites like Daphne du Maurier’s 1938
chiller, Rebecca. Hardboiled detectives
and the true crime craze he wove in
through the addition of Jonathan,
Einstein, and the local constabulary
(who at times may also owe a debt to
the Keystone Kops). On stage meantime,
within weeks of Arsenic’s opening on
Broadway there were almost half-adozen
mysteries, thrillers, and ghost
tales also playing; a mere hint of how
popular these horror tales became as
America geared up for the real-world
horrors of World War II.
In most cases, however, these chiefly
forgettable and now-forgotten efforts
took themselves very seriously. The
rare exceptions tended to be tales of
suave and aristocratic sleuths. Most
notable among these were Nick and
Nora Charles in the Thin Man series
created by Dashiell Hammett (who also
provided the hardboiled hero Sam Spade,
memorably played by Humphrey Bogart
in the film The Maltese Falcon, released
the same year Arsenic premiered). It is in
this last, more tongue-in-cheek direction
that Arsenic made its mark, creating a
literary nexus that would spawn a host
of plays and films from the cheerfully
ghoulish to the mysteriously manic. X
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Arsenic and Old Lace:
A (Partial) Genealogy
of Sorts
Zany Domestics
You Can’t Take It with You
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Addams Family—drawings, cartoon,
television show, movies
Comic Mysteries
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lavender Hill Mob
The Thin Man and its countless sequels
The Ladykillers
To Catch a Thief
Bullets Over Broadway
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Genre Spoofs
Get Smart
Clue
Sleuth
Shear Madness
Murder by Death
Madcap Macabre
Heathers
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Beetlejuice
Delicatessen
Six Feet Under
Young Frankenstein
Fiction & Drama
Agatha Christie’s mysteries,
especially those featuring Miss Marple
Dark Passage
The Petrified Forest
Key Largo
Gaslight
Psycho
And of course,
the Sondheim/Wheeler
classic Sweeney Todd is
hard to imagine without
Arsenic and Old Lace.
Joseph Mahowald
in Sweeney Todd (2003–04)
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace | 11

Glossary
Compiled by Gavin Witt, Production Dramaturg
Alice Roosevelt: Teddy, convinced that
he is Theodore Roosevelt, imagines
that Elaine is his eldest daughter Alice
(1884–1980). Alice was nicknamed
“Princess Alice” during her father’s tenure
in the White House, and became an
instant celebrity. She was a strong-willed,
outspoken, unconventional, and beautiful
young woman, America’s darling. She
smoked in public, hung around with
young men, gambled, and owned a pet
snake named Emily Spinach—hence,
Teddy’s admonishment that she not be
a rough-housing tomboy. Alice married
a Congressman in 1906, and went on to
lead a fascinating life. [see also: Teddy
Roosevelt]
Allez oop: In 1932, cartoonist V.T. Hamlin created a comic strip
about a cave man named Alley Oop. He’d picked up the phrase
“allez-oup” as a WWI ambulance driver in France. French circus
acrobats cue each other with “allez-oup!” (“let’s go”). The
awesome offensive play in basketball is named after the
comic strip.
Arsenic: When ingested in large doses, the symptoms of
arsenic poisoning include vomiting, bloody diarrhea, burning
pain in the esophagus, cold and clammy skin, weakness, a
sweet metallic taste in the mouth, convulsions, delirium, and
coma. If the victim is left untreated, circulatory failure leads
to death. Used extensively in glass-making, mining, smelting,
and other industrial processes, arsenic is a naturally occurring
mineral found in water, soil, or rock; in its pure form it is a
white, tasteless, odorless element.
Behrman: Samuel N. Behrman (1893–1973) was an American
playwright, screenwriter, and journalist. He was considered one
of Broadway’s leading authors of “high comedy” in the 1930s
and ‘40s: his plays dealt with tolerance in the face of fanaticism
and violence. Great Broadway successes: Second Man (1928),
Biography (1932), End of Summer (1936), and No Time for
Comedy (1939). The “Behrman play” that prompted Mortimer
to compliment Elaine’s “authentic beauty” was probably No
Time for Comedy, in which a successful comic playwright feels
driven to write a serious play in response to the Spanish Civil
War, and ends up deciding to go and fight in Spain himself.
Bleeck’s: Mortimer and Elaine’s thwarted after-theater plans
include Jack Bleeck’s Artist & Writers Restaurant, at 213 W. 40 th
Street. Once a speakeasy, this popular hangout in Manhattan
was the favored haunt of the staff of The Herald Tribune. It’s
still open, and still a favorite with the press.
Blockhouse: Teddy exhorts his troops to storm the blockhouse
at the top of San Juan Hill (i.e., the staircase). He means a small,
single-building fortification, more than a trench and less than a
bunker. [see also: San Juan Hill, Teddy Roosevelt]
Bombazine: Aunt Martha intends to wear bombazine for the
funeral services of her victims. It’s a very Victorian choice: the
heavy black cloth was used mainly for mourning garb, but had
gone out of fashion by the early 20 th Century.
Cardinal Gibbons: James
Cardinal Gibbons (1834–1921),
a Baltimore native, grew up
in County Mayo, Ireland, and
New Orleans. He rose through
the ranks of the Catholic
Church and was made
Archbishop of Baltimore in
1877, a position he held until
his death. He championed
the labor movement, welfare,
civil rights, education, and
dialogue with other religions.
Several presidents sought his counsel, and he was the public
face of Roman Catholicism in the early 20 th Century. In 1917,
Teddy Roosevelt hailed him as the most venerated, respected,
and useful citizen in America. [see also: Teddy Roosevelt]
Chicago World’s Fair: Chicago
has hosted two World’s
Fairs: the World’s Columbian
Exposition in 1893 and the
Century of Progress Exposition
in 1933. Aunt Abby and Aunt
Martha could conceivably
have visited either, but they
are probably remembering the
Fair of 1933. The Fair’s theme
was technological innovation.
It opened on May 27, 1933, on
the shore on Lake Michigan.
Popular and strange exhibits included the performances of fan
dancer Sally Rand, an exhibition of incubators containing real
babies, the “dream cars” of various auto manufacturers, the
arrival of the German airship Graf Zeppelin on October 26 th , the
Homes of Tomorrow, and clubs on the Midway featuring future
star Judy Garland.
Crazy like a fox: The phrase was first recorded in 1935.
Foxes are considered cunning, sly animals, so a person who
is “crazy like a fox” might be cleverly pretending to be crazy
in order to deceive others (much like Hamlet in Shakespeare’s
play, for instance).
Culebra Cut: Renamed the Gaillard Cut in 1915, this is a manmade
valley that forms part of the Panama Canal. The cut, the
result of a monumental engineering effort, is nearly eight
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace | 12

miles long and links Lake Gatun (and the Atlantic Ocean) to
the Gulf of Panama at the Pacific Ocean. General Washington
Goethals was the leader of the Panama Canal project, taking
over work started by the French. [see also: General Goethals,
Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt]
Cyanide: This volatile poison can be detected by its distinctive
odor of bitter almonds. It is a naturally occurring chemical
found (in trace quantities) in many ordinary foods; in
compounds, it is used in manufacturing. When a large dose is
taken, symptoms—including giddiness, headache, palpitation,
and unconsciousness—may occur immediately, and an
untreated victim usually dies within the hour.
“I’d have time to lead you beside distilled waters.” Mortimer
makes a pun! He’s quoting from Psalm 23, one of David’s songs
and one of the most widely known Bible verses. “He leadeth
me beside the still waters,” becomes, whimsically (and a bit
sacrilegiously) a reference to alcoholic consumption.
Psalm 23:
The Lord [is] my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for
his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
Death,
I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy
staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of
mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
—King James Bible
General Goethals: George Washington Goethals (1858–1928,
pronounced Go-tuhles), was an officer and engineer in the U.S.
Army who supervised the construction of the Panama Canal.
Teddy Roosevelt appointed him to that post in 1907, and the
canal was completed in 1914, one year ahead of the target date.
[see also: Culebra Cut, Teddy Roosevelt]
General Miles: Lieutenant General Nelson Miles (1839–1925),
who appears in Arsenic and Old Lace as one of Teddy’s toy
soldiers, began his military career in the Civil War fighting for
the Union. In the 1870s and 1880s, he led campaigns against
Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Chief Joseph. He was appointed
Commanding General of the U.S. Army in 1895 and served
throughout the Spanish-American War. Teddy Roosevelt called
him a “brave peacock.” [see also: Teddy Roosevelt]
Hellzapoppin’: When it closed after 1,404 performances in
December of 1941, Hellzapoppin’ was the longest-running
Broadway musical ever. Populated by dancers, comics, acrobats,
and sideshow entertainers, and barely distinguishable from the
circus or vaudeville, the production was rewritten throughout
the run in order to remain topical. The bane of critics, the show
was enormously popular.
Hunting trip to Africa: A month after leaving office in 1908,
Teddy Roosevelt went on safari in British East Africa, or what
is now the Republic of Kenya. He and his son Kermit shot 512
animals of 296 separate species. He donated the specimens to
the Smithsonian Institution. [see also: Teddy Roosevelt]
Japan: The real President Teddy Roosevelt was always
concerned about the competition he perceived Japan
represented for the U.S. He was perhaps vindicated when, soon
after Arsenic opened, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. [see
also: Teddy Roosevelt]
Judith Anderson: Mortimer
orders Martha and Abby to
get out of their mourning
clothes, because he thinks they
look like Judith Anderson. In
1941, the renowned Australian
actress had just starred in
Hitchcock’s Rebecca as Mrs.
Danvers, a frightening, obsessive
housekeeper who kept her
former mistress’ room as a shrine
and tortured the second Mrs. de
Winter with her memory. Mrs.
Danvers dressed all in black.
Anderson also became known for her grim turns as Lady
Macbeth and Medea.
Lady Baltimore cake: A white cake topped with a boiled
7-minute frosting filled with chopped nuts and candied and
dried fruits. Despite its name, Lady Baltimore cake was not
invented in Baltimore, Maryland, and it is unlikely that it was
named for Ann Arundel, wife of the Irish Lord Baltimore who
inherited Maryland in the 17 th Century. Some maintain that
it was the signature cake of the 19 th -century Lady Baltimore
Next Stage: Arsenic & Old Lace | 13

Glossary
Continued
>>>
Tearoom in Charleston, South Carolina, adapted from the more
common Queen Cake. Others hold that the cake was fictional
to begin with, but sounded so delicious that readers clamored
to have the recipe, and some creative chef obliged. The
popular writer Owen Wister wrote the novel Lady Baltimore
in 1906, in which a young man orders the eponymous cake
for a wedding. On December 24, 1906, the Daily Gazette and
Bulletin of Williamsport, Pennsylvania published the classic
recipe. Chopped figs and candied cherries are often added to
the frosting as well, and a similar yellow cake is known as the
“Lord Baltimore.”
Mayor LaGuardia: Fiorello
LaGuardia (1882–1947) was the
Republican Mayor of New York
for three terms from 1934 to
1945. In 1941, FDR appointed
him the first director of the
Office of Civilian Defense. He
was a very popular mayor and
a supporter of the New Deal,
helping to lead New York out of the Depression. He is recalled
today in the name of the airport.
Mutt and Jeff: The first successful daily comic strip, it ran
from 1907–1982. The strip seems never to have been adapted
into a play touring American provincial towns, however: the
theater’s loss.
Nora Bayes Theatre: The play that Mortimer is reviewing,
Murder Will Out, is playing at the Nora Bayes Theatre. Nora
(1880–1928) was an extremely popular vaudevillian, singer, and
Broadway star. She co-wrote “Shine On, Harvest Moon” with
her second husband; sang “Over There,” the World War I song
by George M. Cohan; and played in the Ziegfeld Follies. She
established her own Manhattan theater in 1918, at 216 W. 44 th
Street. The New York Times purchased it in 1940, and it was
demolished in 1945 to accommodate the paper’s expansion.
The theater was dark for most of 1941, so Kesselring’s fictive
play wasn’t actually playing in rep with anything.
Panama Canal: One of Teddy Roosevelt’s most noteworthy
achievements. Starting in 1904, the Canal was dug across the
narrowest strip of Central America, to allow ships to pass from
the Atlantic to the Pacific and back without sailing around all of
South America. The interest of the United States in the region
contributed to the formation of Panama as an independent
state: when Colombia refused the payment Roosevelt
offered for the right to build the canal, he secretly supported
a revolution. Ships started sailing the canal in 1914, and the
canal was officially opened in 1921. [see also: Teddy Roosevelt,
Culebra Cut, yellow fever]
Pirandello: When Mortimer is “feeling a little Pirandello,” he
is referring to the work of Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936), an
Italian playwright and novelist and the Nobel Laureate of 1934.
Pirandello’s work anticipated the absurdist, existential dramas
of Beckett, Pinter, and Ionesco. Mortimer is probably referring
to Pirandello’s most famous work, Six Characters in Search
of an Author, in which the six characters of an uncompleted
play invade another rehearsal and demand the chance to
play out their lives. These creations rebel against their creator
and attack the structure and foundation of the play. This
metatheatricality finds an echo in some parts of Arsenic and
Old Lace. Six Characters made its New York debut in 1922.
Prodigal: Jonathan casts himself as the title character in the
Parable of the Prodigal Son, (Luke 15:11–32). It’s a story about
a father with two sons: the younger takes his share of the
inheritance while Dad is still living, goes far away, and wastes
it all on the high life. He returns when the money runs out, and
his father welcomes him back with open arms (and a delicious
fatted calf). The older brother is jealous, because he’s been a
good and faithful son the whole time, and the father responds:
“Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It
was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this
thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is
found.” Not quite the response Jonathan’s homecoming elicits
from his aunts.
Rumble seat: Jonathan and Dr. Einstein have stored poor Mr.
Spenalzo in the rumble seat, an exterior upholstered seat
opening out from the rear end of the car in place of a trunk.
Rumble seats were also known as dickey seats or mother-inlaw
seats, and began to be phased out in America in the 1930s.
San Juan Hill: In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt went to Cuba at the
head of a volunteer regiment known as the “Rough Riders” to
fight in the Spanish-American War. He led a death-defying
charge against Kettle Hill in the battle that marked the
beginning of the end for the Spanish. Other American troops
actually captured San Juan Hill on the same day, and it has
become the better-remembered hill, forever associated with
Roosevelt’s charge. [see also: Teddy Roosevelt]
Smelling salts: Mortimer requests smelling salts for Elaine
after her encounter with Jonathan. Smelling salts are
ammonium carbonate, a whitish crystalline solid. The release
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Glossary
Continued
of the ammonia irritates the mucous membranes of the nose,
and triggers an inhalation reflex. They are used to arouse
people from unconsciousness, and to revive one from a fit of
the vapors.
Strindberg: Johan August Strindberg (1849–1912) remains,
along with Henrik Ibsen, one of the most important
Scandinavian writers ever, and one of the fathers of modern
theater. His best-known plays include Miss Julie, The Father,
A Dream Play, The Dance of Death, and Ghost Sonata. His
earlier work is naturalistic, but in a later period he pioneered
expressionism in drama. Strindberg confronts class, gender
roles, dysfunctional family dynamics, and repressive social
mores.
Strychnine: Strychnine is commonly used as a rat poison.
When ingested by a human, the characteristic symptoms
of strychnine convulsion usually appear after 20 minutes.
The victim experiences intense pain and fear throughout
the convulsions, which last for two minutes and reoccur
periodically until the seizures are controlled or the victim dies.
Teddy Roosevelt: Theodore
Roosevelt, Jr. (1858–1919),
was the 26 th President of the
United States, serving for
two terms from 1901–1909.
Before coming to office
after President William
McKinley was assassinated,
he was a rancher in the
Dakota Territory, a hero of
the Spanish-American war,
and the governor of New
York. He was a historian, a lawyer, and a prolific writer; his 35
books ranged in subject from the American frontier to naval
history. He was born into a wealthy New York family, but
pushed for progressive reforms throughout his political life.
As President, Roosevelt spearheaded the construction of the
Panama Canal and became known as a “trust buster.” An
ardent conservationist, he set aside 194 million acres of land
for national parks and wildlife refuges, and urged Congress to
establish the United States Forest Service in 1905. Roosevelt
won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for brokering the peace
treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War. Although his
opponents decried him as a cowboy imperialist, his boundless
energy, childlike curiosity, and wide-ranging intellectual
interests won him many admirers, and he remains one of the
most popular presidents in history.
The Oregon: The USS Oregon never made it to Australia. She
was launched in 1893, and served in the Spanish-American
War, setting a record with a historic voyage in 1898. In 66 days,
she sailed over 14,000 miles, from San Francisco to Florida,
circumnavigating South America. This voyage swept away all
opposition to the construction of the Panama Canal, as the
Oregon’s journey would have been a mere three weeks if the
Canal had already existed. The Oregon continued to serve nobly
in the Pacific until she was scheduled to be dismantled for
scrap in WWII. However, it turned out that there was plenty of
scrap metal to be had without destroying an old war hero, so
she was reinstated and used as a munitions barge in the Battle
of Guam. Finally, in 1948, she fell apart and drifted off to sea.
[see also: Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt]
Thoreau: Mortimer’s ambitions reach beyond the footlights:
he’s writing a book on Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the
prolific American transcendentalist author and philosopher
best known for Walden and the pamphlet Civil Disobedience.
Thoreau wrote over 20 volumes of poetry, essays, books, and
journals, dealing with such topics as abolition, ecology and
the environment, conscientious objection, and nonviolent
resistance. He was part of the literary and philosophical circle
that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
True Detective: The original
American true crime magazine,
founded in 1924, True Detective
published both fictional and
factual accounts of crime and
detective work. The magazine
was the home for early Dashiell
Hammett (whose detective,
Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart
made famous in The Maltese
Falcon), and spawned hundreds
of imitations. Although
beloved by law enforcement
(and J. Edgar Hoover, a charter subscriber), the magazine never
spurned controversy: the 1931 serial “I Am a Fugitive from a
Chain Gang,” about Georgia’s brutal penal system, led to prison
reform across the nation.
Yellow fever: Yellow fever—an acute viral disease that causes
high fever, muscle pain, vomiting, shivers, loss of appetite,
and, in its toxic phase, jaundice, bleeding from all orifices, and
kidney failure—is spread by mosquitoes; this was discovered
by a medical team, led by Dr. Walter Reed, during the Spanish-
American War. Panama was prone to yellow fever epidemics,
which had devastated all attempts to build a canal until Reed’s
discoveries were implemented. Still, yellow fever, malaria, and
landslides took their toll: as many as 27,500 workers may have
died during construction of the Panama Canal. The last major
outbreak of the disease in the United States was the 1905 New
Orleans epidemic; a vaccine was developed in 1937. [see also:
Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt] X
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Bibliogr aphy
Further Reading
In addition to various editions of the play itself, available singly or in anthologies, you might want to check out some of the plays
of Lindsay and Crouse; see if you can identify their authorial hand….
»
»
»
»
State of the Union
Life With Father
Anything Goes (book of the musical)
The Sound of Music (book of the musical)
An intriguing collection of plays along the lines of Arsenic and Old Lace, also from an early heyday of American theater, can be
found in Strictly Dishonorable and Other Lost American Plays, edited by Richard Nelson (New York: TCG, 1986). This includes the
title play by Preston Sturges, best known for his screwball film comedies, and a rare collaboration between Howard Lindsay and
Damon Runyon (whose short stories provided the source for Guys and Dolls).
Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway. New York, 1970.
— An affectionate, extremely comprehensive insider portrait of the Great White Way from its earliest years through the
decades, by the legendary critic himself.
Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway Scrapbook. New York, 1947.
— Includes charming illustrations by Al Hirschfeld, and a rich selection of Atkinson’s reviews through the years, including some
storied productions—as well as some best forgotten.
Fritz, Jean. Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt. New York, 1991.
— A highly readable sketch of the 26 th President, aimed at younger and general audiences.
Lindsay, Cynthia. Dear Boris: The Life of William Henry Pratt a.k.a. Boris Karloff. New York, 1975.
— An insider’s tale of the surprises, secrets, and sorrows behind the mask of this acclaimed horror actor—sweetly and gently
told, full of unusual illustrations.
McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback. New York, 2001.
— A definitive modern biography of Teddy Roosevelt, by one of America’s leading historians.
Robbins, Michael W. and Wendy Palitz. Brooklyn: A State of Mind. New York, 2001.
— A mammoth compilation of charming anecdotes, recollections, and tales about the many, many faces of Brooklyn.
Server, Lee. Over My Dead Body. San Francisco, 1994.
— A glossy, eye-catching survey of “The Sensational Age of the American Paperback: 1945-1955” that covers the highpoints
of the noir era.
Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York, 1997.
— For some of the historical background of mental illness, both in period attitudes and the treatment available; what Happy
Dale might entail.
Skinner, Cornelia Otis. Life with Lindsay and Crouse. Boston, 1976.
— A gossipy, good-natured account of the many ups and very rare downs of the blessed theatrical union of Howard
Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who as performers, writers, directors, or producers helped to usher many a piece of theater
history to the stage.
Willensky, Elliot. When Brooklyn Was the World. New York, 1986.
— A lovingly nostalgic portrait of, arguably, the golden years of the city-in-The-City—from 1920 to 1957.
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