Proctorsville - "Arsenic and Old Lace," a fast-paced comedy directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant, will be the first in the line-up of films of the winter Black & White Nights Film Series at Cavendish.
In this 1944 classic, Grant plays Mortimer Brewster, a writer and theater critic who discovers that his two maiden aunts have a secret line of charitable work that they run out of his boyhood home in Brooklyn: they invite lonely old gents over for homemade elderberry wine. What they don't tell him is that they lace it with arsenic as a way of ending the unsuspecting men's loneliness and then bury the bodies in the cellar.
Adapted from a successful Broadway play, "Arsenic and Old Lace" brings to the screen two other Hollywood greats, Peter Lorre and Raymond Massey.
Frank Capra's film was released at a time when the American public welcomed comic relief after three years involvement in World War II. Considered a dark comedy in that era, the film is nonviolent by today's standards and gives us a glimpse of a grand old Hollywood filmmaking style that is long gone.
The classic film will be shown at 7 p.m. at Cavendish Elementary School on Route 131 in Proctorsville. Films are free and refreshments will be available.
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