Lady for a Day (1932-33)

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.

She Done Him Wrong (1932-33)

She Done Him Wrong stars Mae West as, well, a typical Mae West character. She's a saloon singer in the Bowery during the so-called Gay Nineties who's involved with several men, one of them a convict named Chick Clark (Owen Moore) who escapes from prison and is on his way to see her. She has, unsurprisingly, been less than faithful during his year-long absence and begins to fear what might happen upon his return when he discovers the other men she's been seeing. Another man she’s intrigued by is Serge Stanieff (Gilbert Roland), who’s working with criminals Gus Jordan (Noah Beery) and Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) but who West sizes up when they meet just in case he might be material for later action. And then there’s Cary Grant (yes, Cary Grant!) as a missionary who keeps stopping by the saloon where West’s Lady Lou works and lives. You really didn’t expect that a Mae West film would only feature one love interest, did you?

Grant, in one of his first featured roles, actually plays the leader of a local temperance league, and West sets her sights on him as soon as she meets him. The mission’s in trouble, and Lou secretly does her best to make sure he’s able to keep his building, a very generous act for someone who’s clearly angling for him to pay attention to her. All of this is done with a bit of a sideways grin, and you can't take any of it too seriously. The film certainly has a brisk pace, clocking in at about 66 minutes long, reportedly making it the shortest film ever nominated for Best Picture.

Considering the brevity of the film, it’s quite surprising that West’s character doesn’t even show up until about nine minutes into the movie. We instead get a montage of the street, including an organ grinder’s monkey, horses and wagons, ladies walking, and a band playing. There’s even a shot involving some very huge glasses of beer. We even see her portrait, allegedly, above the bar in the saloon, a large nude rendition of her that doesn’t particularly look like her. She then rides up in a buggy to the chagrin of the women in town and waves from the men. She describes herself as “one of the finest women ever walked the streets.” Of course, she is.

What follows, plot-wise, is almost like a series of vignettes rather than a necessarily coherent narrative. We learn, for example, that Gus and Rita are running what a prostitution ring. When a young woman named Sally runs into the saloon and attempts to commit suicide, it’s Gus and Rita (and Serge) who promise to help her. Little does everyone realize that they’re going to force her into working as a prostitute. That’s not their only crime, naturally, but it’s the one that quickly gets the attention of Grant’s Captain Cummings. Since West was one of the co-writers of the screenplay, you can bet she knew the implications of that name.

Lou goes to visit her boyfriend Chick in prison, but he threatens to kill her if she’s been unfaithful. She calms him down by claiming that she’s been waiting for only him, which seems unlikely given that she knows every single convict in the prison. She even calls out two prisoners who seem, well, very close to each other, dubbing them “the Cherry Sisters.” Maybe that’s why it was called the “Gay Nineties.” Thinking she’s calmed Chick down, she returns to the saloon and to her incessant flirting with various men.

West sings a few songs during the movie, most notably "Frankie and Johnny," but her renditions of “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone” and “A Guy What Takes His Time” serve to amuse the audience in the saloon and those watching the film. She is also sewn into some pretty spectacular gowns and cinched very tight at the waist. There’s not a moment in the film when she isn’t sparkly or frilly or covered in diamonds and sequins – or sometimes all of those at once. Even her room upstairs in the saloon is fantastic. It’s filled with Victorian furniture and all kinds of knickknacks. The production designers and costume designers here did amazing work.

The best part of a Mae West film, though, is the dialog, especially the zingers. Almost every line she speaks is a double entendre. Actually, many of them aren’t even that; they’re too direct to be an entendre. I mean, when Grant’s Captain Cummings tries to put handcuffs on her, she reminds him that “hands aren’t everything.” This is also the film where she gets to deliver one of her most famous lines: "Why don't you come up some time and see me?" But she also shares this bit of folk wisdom: “Listen, when women go wrong, men go right after them.” When her maid Pearl (Louise Beavers) says that she wouldn’t want a police officer to catch her without a petticoat, Lou responds, “No policeman? What about a nice fireman?” And then there’s one of my favorites: “You know, it was a toss-up whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir. The choir lost.” You don’t get this many laughs in such a short period of time outside of a slapstick comedy.

All of the plotlines come to a head when Chick breaks out of jail and makes his way to the saloon. That’s when Russian Rita learns that Serge has given Lou a gift that was meant originally for her. Somehow Chick and another man to whom Lou is connected, Dan Flynn, wind up in her room while she’s performing, and Chick kills Dan. Grant shows up, reveals that he’s an undercover agent nicknamed “The Hawk,” and either arrests or shoots almost everyone on the screen. Instead of arresting Lou, Captain Cummings takes her away in a carriage and puts a ring on her finger. It’s a bit of a shock given how much he obviously knows about her past, but I suppose a happy ending is in order even for a comedy like this one.

Discovering that She Done Him Wrong was nominated for the Outstanding Production Oscar came as a bit of a shock. Perhaps the Academy nominated it in an attempt to snub the newly formed Catholic Legion of Decency, an organization that cited West and this film (with its hints of promiscuity, especially by a woman) as one of the reasons for its creation. It certainly wouldn't be the last time that the Academy sided with controversial films in its long history.

Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production