Lady für einen Tag

It's not often (especially these days) that a character actor or actress pulls a leading role. This movie rates my 8/10 vote mostly on the strength of the marvelous character performance of May Robson in the central role as Apple Annie, an elderly down-and-out who must somehow preserve the imaginary persona she has built for herself to her daughter, soon to arrive from Paris with a prospective husband in tow. Robson was nominated for an Oscar, as lead, and richly deserved it for her tragicomic characterization.

Frank Capra's excellent direction (also nominated for an Oscar) keeps the plot unfolding with the speed and apparently effortless fluidity so characteristic of the comedies of this period. Capra did not win the Oscar that year, but this film launched his series of feel-good dramas and sparkling comedies that netted him three subsequent Oscars.

But this is far more than a feel-good comedy/drama. It's an excellent movie that stands on its merits outside the genre, with a solid supporting cast. Capra's own remake (Pocketful of Miracles), doesn't meet the standard he himself set here. And although I have tremendous respect for Bette Davis, who played the lead in the remake, it is the difference between a good performance and an exceptional portrayal. Now that I've seen this version, May Robson simply IS Apple Annie.

Born in Australia in 1858, May Robson certainly never envisioned as career in Hollywood films. She had a long career as a stage actress and appeared in about a dozen silent films, including CHICAGO with Phyllis Haver, and RUBBER TIRES with Bessie Love. Both film survive. She made her talkie debut in MOTHER'S MILLIONS in 1931 and appeared in another 50 films until her death in 1942.

Oscar nominated for playing Apple Annie, she lost the award to Katharine Hepburn for MORNING GLORY. Robson should have won, but her role was really a supporting role in this film, based on a short story by Damon Runyon.

As the irascible old apple peddler, Robson had the role of her career. Seems she has a daughter (Jean Parker) in Europe. The old lady gets mail at a swanky hotel thru a friend who works there. But when the letter comes that the daughter is coming home with a husband to be (and his father, a Spanish count), Annie is in trouble.

Dave the Dude (Warren William) a gambler, won't make a bet without getting an apple from Annie as a good luck token. When she goes missing, the Dude sends out a search party, locates Annie, and learns of her plight. They hit upon a plan to set her up as a lady with the Judge (Guy Kibbee) as her distinguished husband. Annie gets a makeover and everything is set for the daughter's return.

But the stupid cops get wind of what's happening and think there's a big swindle going on. Will the cops squash the charade? Will Annie be exposed as a fraud?

Robson and William are terrific. There's also Glenda Farrell as the brassy Missouri Martin (based on Texas Guinan) who joins in to help the charade. Co-stars include Ned Sparks as Happy, Nat Pendleton, Robert Emmett O'Connor, Tiny Jones, Hobart Bosworth, Samuel S. Hinds, Walter Connolly, Halliwell Hobbes, and Barry Norton.

A fairy tale to be sure, but one with a touch of reality. Director Frank Capra used several real-life panhandlers in the cast. It's also notable that Annie admits she was never married.

Back in the days of the studio system only one B picture outfit managed to vault itself into the big time and compete with the majors. That studio was Harry Cohn's Columbia and the film that did it was Frank Capra's Lady For A Day.

In his very candid memoirs Capra said unabashedly that his goal was to win one of those statues nicknamed Oscar. The Motion Picture Academy Awards were only five years old, but still the awards were coveted then because it meant prestige and far bigger salaries and in a director's case, bigger budgets to work with.

Capra said he tried and failed with a very arty film, The Bitter Tea of General Yen which lost money for Columbia and Cohn. He set out try it a different way with a sentimental story from that most sentimental of writers, Damon Runyon. The original story was entitled Madame LaGimp and it was about a street beggar who the great city of New York takes to its heart for a brief period with the assistance of a gangster with a streak of sentiment.

But this was Columbia, the poverty row studio so Capra couldn't get the only old lady movie star around in Marie Dressler from MGM. May Robson was his second choice for Apple Annie, the street beggar who has a daughter in a convent school in Spain and engaged to marry into Spanish nobility.

As for the gangster Capra wanted James Cagney, but Harry Cohn couldn't pry him loose from Jack Warner. He was offered Warren William instead and certainly the dapper and elegant William played a different kind of gangster than Cagney would have. For William's moll, Capra's partner and screenwriter for Lady for a Day Robert Riskin persuaded his then girl friend Glenda Farrell to take the part. She Jack Warner was willing to part with.

With the great skill that Capra had in casting his films, some of the best character actors around like Guy Kibbee, Nat Pendleton, Ned Sparks, and Walter Connolly filled out his roster. A lot of these people would work for Frank Capra again and again.

Came Oscar time and Lady for a Day had the great distinction of being nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay adapted from another source. This was the first film from Columbia Pictures that was ever nominated for anything by the Motion Picture Academy. May Robson made Capra forget he ever wanted Marie Dressler. Unfortunately she lost to a young actress picking up her first of four Oscars, Katharine Hepburn.

Riskin lost to the writers of Little Women and the film itself lost that year to the British story Cavalcade. One of the most embarrassing moments in Frank Capra's life occurred when Awards host Will Rogers in announcing the Best Director said "come up and get it Frank."

Capra rose thinking it was him and the spotlights came down on him. Then there was a frantic buzzing and the spotlight shifted to the opposite side of the hall where Frank Lloyd got up to accept the award that was meant for him for directing Cavalcade. Talk about feeling like a nickel looking for change.

However next year Capra's next film It Happened One Night swept all the major Oscars including his first. It sounds like something that only could have happened in a Frank Capra movie.

This sublime, charming fairy tale, about an old apple seller (the lovely May Robson) who is helped by a gangster named Dave the Dude (Warren William) and his buddies in order to make her rich and respectable for her returning daughter and in-law from Spain, is conceivably Capra's freshest, most underrated classic, perhaps with the exception of "The Bitter Tea of General Yen", which was also released in 1933. While "Bitter Tea" was a commercial flop, "Lady For a Day" proved to be Capra's first big success with the Depression-era audiences and a sign of things to come. A must-see!

Glenn Ford and Betty Davis in color fall short competing with the BW original version with lesser known but more convincing actors. Lets face facts. Glenn Ford never played a convincing bad guy/bad boy. On the other hand little known Warren William had to convince the viewers that he wasn't a bad guy all the time. Dave the Dude is basically a bad guy with a touch of good. Even his act of kindness to Annie is self serving. This movie is a perfect example that technical advances don't make a better story, lesser known actors can play the role better, and age can define whether any work of art can stand up to the ultimate critic - Time. Different audiences, tastes, standards and means of portraying the play, are the ultimate judge regarding the worth of the production.