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ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
June 20, 2017  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 3:45 p.m. ET

 

I know, it’s an afternoon showing – but this is one of my favorite comedy movies, so I’ll watch it – and recommend it – any chance I get. Cary Grant, in his most broadly comic role ever, plays Mortimer Brewster, a theater critic who discovers his elderly aunts have a macabre habit of inviting elderly old gentlemen to stay in their guest room, as a sort of FDR-era Airbnb, and poisoning them with elderberry wine laced with arsenic. Frank Capra directs this 1944 film version of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap play, and several scenes are stolen by the supporting cast, including Peter Lorre and Raymond Massey as other murderers, and, as the energetically unhinged “Teddy Roosevelt” Brewster, John Alexander.

 
 
 
 
 
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