An enthusiastic performer, he returned to the Broadway stage in the original production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" in 1941, in which he played a homicidal gangster enraged to be frequently mistaken for Karloff. Frank Capra cast Raymond Massey in the 1944 film, which was shot in 1941, while Karloff was still appearing in the role on Broadway. The play's producers allowed the film to be made conditionally: it was not to be released until the production closed. (Karloff reprised his role on television in the anthology series "The Best of Broadway" (1955), and with Tony Randall and Tom Bosley in a 1962 production on the "Hallmark Hall of Fame". He also starred in a radio adaptation produced by Screen Guild Theatre in 1946.)