Cast Background The play Arsenic and Old Lace was written by Joseph Kesselring, son of German immigrants and a former professor at Bethel College, a pacifist Mennonite college. It was written in the anti-war atmosphere of the late 1930s. Capra scholar Matthew C. Gunter argues that the deep theme of both the play and film is America's difficulty in coming to grips with both the positive and negative consequences of the liberty it professes to uphold, and which the Brewsters demand. Although their house is the nicest in the street, there are 12 bodies in the basement. That inconsistency is a metaphor for America's struggle to reconcile the violence of much of its past with the pervasive myths about its role as a beacon of freedom. To recreate the country home that was central to the plot of George Washington Slept Here (1942), the house in Arsenic and Old Lace, which was actually shot in 1941 for a later theatrical release, was used. To ensure it looked the part of a dilapidated home, Warner Bros. crews knocked out bannisters, rafters and floors on the set. Reception Box office According to Warner Bros. records, the film grossed $2,836,000 domestically and $1,948,000 internationally. Critical response The contemporary critical reviews were uniformly positive. The New York Times critic summed up the majority view, "As a whole, Arsenic and Old Lace, the Warner picture which came to the Strand yesterday, is good macabre fun." Variety declared, "Capra's production, not elaborate, captures the color and spirit of the play, while the able writing team of Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein has turned in a very workable, tightly-compressed script. Capra's own intelligent direction rounds out." Harrison's Reports wrote: "An hilarious entertainment, it should turn out to be one of the year's top box-office attractions." John Lardner of The New Yorker called the film "practically as funny in picture form as it did on the stage, and that is very funny indeed." Assessing the film in 1968, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg state in Hollywood in the Forties that "Frank Capra provided a rather overstated and strained version of Arsenic and Old Lace". On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds and approval rating of 85% based on 33 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #30