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Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace, the classic 1944 Frank Capra family relationship mental illness murder mystery black comedy ("From the stage play by Joseph Kesselring"; "Screen Play by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein"; about a man with two crazy brothers, and people start dying, and he assumes it is his brothers, but he quickly finds out his kindly aunts are actually the culprits!) starring Cary Grant (as Mortimer Brewster), Raymond Massey (awkwardly playing the role written for Boris Karloff, who played it on the stage; as Jonathan Brewster), Jack Carson, Priscilla Lane (as Elaine Harper), Peter Lorre (as Dr. Einstein), Edward Everett Horton (as Mr. Witherspoon), James Gleason, Josephine Hull (as Aunt Abby Brewster), Jean Adair (as Aunt Martha Brewster), and John Alexander (as Theodore Brewster, who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt!). Note that this classic was actually filmed in 1941, but due to contractual agreements with the producers of the Broadway version (see below), it wasn't released to theaters until 1944 (though, interestingly enough, the film was still released to U.S. troops between 1941 and 1944!). The "contractual agreements" referred to above was with star Boris Karloff, who owned a portion of the Broadway version. He rightly assumed that releasing the movie version would hurt the box office of the Broadway version, so he wisely had written into the contract that the movie could not be released until the Broadway play stopped running (which usually lasted at most six months). But because this play was so incredibly popular, it ran on Broadway for three years, which meant the movie could not be released for those three years! Finally, note that during those three years, Warner Bros. had parted ways with star Priscilla Lane, so when the movie was finally released in 1944, they barely mentioned her on the U.S. advertising for the movie (she is given small third billing on the one-sheet, behind Jack Carson, and she is not billed at all on several other posters)!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that when Spanish heralds have printing on the back, we picture both sides, but when they are blank on the back, we only picture the front.

Please note that Spanish heralds, like U.S. heralds, were printed in very large quantities, and then sent to individual theaters in Spain, and they would sometimes have the backs of them overprinted with their theater name and specific play dates. But because a movie might play in Spain for a period of a year or two (traveling from theater to theater), there is no guarantee that the date overprinted on the back of the herald is the same as the date that the herald was first printed (and the date that the movie first played in Spain).

Therefore, we don't list the date overprinted on the back of a herald as the date of the herald unless we know that was when the movie first played in Spain. If we believe the herald was printed earlier, then we use that date. If it is important to you that the date on the herald is the date the movie first opened, then please look at our image of the back of this herald to see if there is a different date printed on it.

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