Lady for a Day, an early Frank Capra film, was nominated for Best Picture of 1932-33 (the last year the Academy had a "split" year for eligibility). It has all the hallmarks of a Capra film, with its sentimental depictions of the lower classes and the struggles that they face. Some will perhaps think that I'm criticizing sentimentality here; nothing could be farther from the truth. Capra was one of the few and one of the best at showing the plight of those people who were not often the subject of movies. And, with its story of how a group of gangsters and thugs and the like try to help a poor apple seller pretend to be rich in order to impress her daughter's fiance, Lady for a Day is a movie that rightfully earns its emotional impact.
May Robson plays Apple Annie, who has come to America to make money but has wound up instead trying to eke out an existence by selling apples in Times Square. However, she has been writing letters to her daughter back in Europe making it appear that she is wealthy and attending lots of parties and balls with the rich society of New York. Dave the Dude, played by Warren William, is a gangster who considers buying an apple from Annie to be a good luck charm. Once he learns of her plight, he decides to help her pretend to be the society matron she has told her daughter that she is. What starts out as a simple "con" turns into a series of increasingly more difficult--and, therefore, more amusing--attempts to keep up the masquerade.
Dave's odd behavior can't help but attract the attention of the police, who suspect that he must be up to something big. He has, after all, gotten the assistance of almost every criminal under his control in New York to carry out this plan. Thanks to Dave's new activities, the police chief, the mayor, even the governor begin to question what his next action will be. In truth, he's just trying to help out a friend, and the movie's depiction of his gentleness with Annie is one of its most touching attributes. In fact, almost everyone tries to do her or his best to help Annie, making this one of the best films ever about the nature of true friendship.
One of my favorite scenes involves Dave trying to teach the thugs and molls in his gang how to behave like the upper class. Needless to say, they don't respond well to instruction. Several times during the movie, in fact, it appears that the entire scheme is going to implode. Yet each time it gets close to that moment of collapse, something happens to keep the fairy tale alive for just a bit longer. I won't spoil how they pull off the ending of the movie, but it's a marvel that will make you smile. Capra seems to be making a point here about the inherent goodness of people, and that's a message we could certainly do with hearing more often.
Robson is so charming as Apple Annie. She was already late in her acting career when she took on this role, and she manages to make viewers sympathetic to her plight with her portrayal. While another, less talented actress might have made you question why Annie keeps up this charade for so long, Robson instead makes you hopeful that she can continue to manage it. William makes for a very suave Dave the Dude (don't you just love the names that Damon Runyon came up with?), and he is surrounded by a first-rate cast of supporting players in his gang of criminals with hearts of gold.
I can't imagine how different this film might be if someone remade it today. (It was remade in 1961 as A Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis as Apple Annie, but I don't think the later version is quite as good.) It would be doubtful that anyone could capture the enormous warmth of the story that Capra's film depicts, and the rest of the vagabonds who share Annie's plight would likely be saddled with far more depressing characterizations. Thankfully, we still have the original available to us to remind us of our common ability to be good to each other, to help each other out, no matter how absurd or ridiculous the "project" might be.
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