The lines which most date the film—and the most intriguing, however, for us history buffs—are those regarding Franklin D. Roosevelt, then in his third term as President. Toward the end of the film, Teddy, always calling cabinet meetings, vetoing bills or checking on the state of the country, is talking to a doctor (Chester Clute) who is about to sign his commitment papers. “I’ll run for a third term,” he muses, “and won’t be elected, and that’ll be the last of the Roosevelts.” The doctor responds, “That’s what you think.” And when Mr. Witherspoon (Edward Everett Horton), head of Happy Dale Sanatorium, learns there’s to be another “Teddy Roosevelt” inmate, he shakes his head. “Another Roosevelt—oh, dear, dear.”
Aside from the Karloff and Roosevelt references, there are occasional “in” jokes. On a tombstone, a prop man had carved “Archibald Leach,” Grant’s real name. In one scene, the old maid sisters exchange whispers. Could this be Capra’s own homage to another pair of sisters, Jane and Amy Faulkner in the director’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town? In the beginning of the film, before the Brewster sisters are seen, policeman O’Hara asks, “George Washington do any sleeping around here?” Naturally I saw it as a possible allusion to George Washington Slept Here, also by Warner Bros., released in late 1942. But that is debatable.
One line from the play which couldn’t be said on the puritanical screen of the day, despite the horrors and indecencies of the war then underway, was one of Mortimer’s. He has discovered he is, after all, not a Brewster, where, as he says, “Insanity runs in our family—it practically gallops.” He isn’t insane, like his aunts and nephews! On Broadway, when his aunts inform Mortimer that he’s illegitimate, he gleefully tells Elaine, “Darling, I’m a bastard!” In the movie, the line is cleaned to become, “I’m not really a Brewster. I’m a son of a sea cook!”
.