August 27, 2012

19 Lady for a Day (1933)

***½
Country: US
Director: Frank Capra

It Happened One Night (1934) is often considered director Frank Capra's breakout film. Yet it could be argued that Lady for a Day, made one year earlier, was Capra's true breakout film for several reasons. As the picture that earned Capra the first of his six Oscar nominations as best director, it put him on the map as one of Hollywood's major filmmakers even before It Happened One Night. The movie also made Capra the top director at Columbia Pictures. Because his films were such reliable money-makers, Capra was already one of the favored directors of Columbia's boss, Harry Cohn. But the unusually strong box office performance of Lady for a Day, combined with the fact that it was the first Columbia film to be nominated for the Academy Award for best picture, thus giving the Poverty Row studio a huge boost in prestige, further enhanced Capra's standing with Cohn. Lady for a Day also determined the future direction of Capra's career. Even though he got his start as a comedy writer for Hal Roach and Mack Sennett, most of the more than twenty features he had directed were dramatic pictures. It was this film that solidified Capra's reputation as a comedy director, and after Lady for a Day he worked almost exclusively in comedy.

In the opening moments of Lady for a Day, you can tell you're in Depression-era Frank Capra territory. As crowds of prosperous-looking people stroll down a big-city street, they mingle with the dispossessed—a legless man selling pencils, a blind beggar playing an accordion, a shabby elderly woman selling flowers, an even shabbier and more dishevelled elderly woman selling apples. The apple seller is Apple Annie (May Robson), an impoverished alcoholic with a secret. Her illegitimate daughter Louise (Jean Parker) has been living since childhood in a convent in Spain, and for years Annie has been successfully deceiving her into believing her mother is a rich New York City society matron.

Annie's world is about to come crashing down, because she has just received a letter from her daughter saying that she is on her way to New York with her Spanish fiancé and his father, a nobleman who wants to meet Louise's family to make sure they are of suitable social background before he approves the marriage. The desperate Annie has one hope, though, a dapper gangster called Dave the Dude (Warren William) who believes that Annie is his personal good luck mascot. Out of a combination of self-interest and genuine affection, Dave hatches an elaborate plan whereby he and his cronies will help Annie impersonate the genteel society matron she has pretended to be until the marriage has been approved and Louise is safely on her way back to Europe. When multiple complications arise, however, the success of Dave's scheme begins to look decidedly uncertain.

Lady for a Day was the fourth of ten pictures Frank Capra worked on with screenwriter Robert Riskin and the first comedy Riskin wrote for Capra for which he received sole screenwriting credit. Capra is often associated with screwball comedy, but I think of the typical Capra comedy of the 1930s less as screwball comedy than as comedy with a social conscience. It Happened One Night certainly has elements of this, and Capra's films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Meet John Doe—all but Mr. Smith written by Riskin—take the idea even further. These are the movies people usually think of when they think of a Frank Capra film of the 1930s, and in all the important ways Lady for a Day was the first of these. Like those later films, Lady for a Day deals with social and economic warfare between the rich and the poor and perhaps more significantly, between unconventional individualists and stuffed shirts. As in those later pictures, it's also clear in Lady for a Day where the sympathies of Capra, the great populist, lie as he skewers the privileged, the pompous, and the narrow-minded.

Yet there is an essential difference between this film and the later social comedies: here social issues are used as a means to comedy, not as the point of that comedy. The same is true to a certain extent of It Happened One Night. In a way the success of that film—its clean sweep of the Oscars including one for Capra's direction, its success as one of the top money-making films of its year, its huge influence on screen comedy—inflated Capra's ambitions as a filmmaker. Entertaining his viewers was no longer enough; he wanted to educate them as well. As Alistair Cooke put it, after It Happened One Night Capra began "to make movies about themes and not people." This quality in the later Capra-Riskin films has always kept me from enjoying them unconditionally.

Thankfully, in Lady for a Day Capra doesn't attempt to combine comedy with sermonizing but is content to detach himself from the foibles of his characters the way Preston Sturges did. He's able to observe human weakness without condemning it. His characters aren't purely good or purely evil. His likable social outsiders all have dubious qualities; his unlikable social insiders eventually reveal qualities of character that are in some way admirable. The world of Lady for a Day is not yet the black-and-white world found in Capra's films from Mr. Deed Goes to Town onward, and for me that only makes the film all the more enjoyable.

Based on a story by Damon Runyon, Lady for a Day abounds in colorful characters, and one of its great pleasures is the way the actors inhabit these eccentric characters with so much personality. Because Columbia was a Poverty Row studio, much of the cast had to be borrowed from other studios. When Capra's first choice to play Apple Annie, Marie Dressler, wasn't available because she was still filming Dinner at Eight, Capra turned to another MGM player, the 75-year old Australian actress May Robson. She is just sensational as she runs the gamut of her character's various personas, from brash, streetwise sidewalk peddler to suicidal drunk frantic with anxiety to doting mother to refined society matron. Robson is so good that she was one of three nominees for the best actress Oscar. (The winner was Katharine Hepburn for Morning Glory.) Warren William doesn't seem quite so comfortable in his role. He's better at conveying Dave's slick fashion sense and his menace—he is, after all, a gangster—than he is at conveying Dave's uneducated, lower-class origins.

Top: Jean Parker, Warren William, Glenda Farrell
Bottom: May Robson, Guy Kibbee

The supporting cast is one of those ensembles of character actors that make so many of the films of the 1930s so enjoyable. Glenda Farrell is Missouri Martin, Dave's slangy but savvy night-club singer mistress. The first glimpse of her, suggestively performing a song called "I Want a Man" in her night club act, will almost certainly have you thinking of Mae West. Guy Kibbee is the slightly bombastic, down-on-his-luck pool shark Judge Henry G. Blake, recruited by Dave to be Annie's temporary husband. Portly Walter Connolly (Claudette Colbert's father in It Happened One Night) is the insistent father of Louise's fiancé. Lunky Nat Pendleton plays one of Dave's criminal cronies, a dim-witted character called Shakespeare who masquerades as Annie's chauffeur. Best of all is bilious, stone-faced Ned Sparks as Dave's chief henchman, representing himself to the visitors as Dave's personal secretary. He gets off one of the best lines in the movie when he expresses his frustration at the folly of Dave's elaborate charade to pass off Annie as a society matron: "I'm going over to the insane asylum and hobnob with some sensible people."

To my mind Lady for a Day has worn better than some of Capra's more famous movies. While the film is well aware of the economic and social inequities of the time, it doesn't try to overlay this with a lesson in civics, ethics, or tolerance. The unpleasant realities of the Depression might give it extra realism, but this one is above all for entertainment.

Lady for a Day plays on Turner Classic Movies on Thursday, August 30, as part of TCM's Summer Under the Stars salute to Warren William. Check local listings for times. It was released in Blu-ray and a new DVD version by Inception Media in March 2012. This post is part of the TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. For details check the sites of co-hosts Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and ScribeHard on Film, or visit the blogathon's Facebook page.

19 comments:

  1. Great blog post R.D. "Lady for a Day" is one of my favorite movies and I never tire of seeing it. I agree with you on its qualities, especially as it being early Capra and its indication of the combination of comedy, tragedy, and empathy that was such a characteristic of the Capra films.

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    1. Christian, "Lady for a Day" does seem to anticipate Capra's later films with its serio-comic tone, although I find that the the serious and the comic fit together more comfortably here than in most of Capra's later pictures. Capra is thought of as a comedy director, yet his comedies always have serious elements to them and seemed to get more serious over the years. Movies like "Meet John Doe" and even "Arsecic and Old Lace" deal with subjects that are really not inherently funny. What I think of as his greatest film, "It's a Wonderful Life," isn't even a comedy at all, but a rather melancholy meditation on existence and mortality, perhaps Capra's attempt to put his war experiences in perspective.

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  2. This is one of my favorite Capras, and I enjoyed your perceptive, beautifully written piece on it. Whenever I watch it, I always think that Capra must have been a little in love with Robson (who's just wonderful in the role) because he gives her such glowing, lovely close-ups. I agree with your point that William seems more comfortable as a well-groomed charmer than as a lowlife type, but I find him so enjoyable (especially the part at the end, asking the governor if he believes in 'fairy tales' - his facial expression and vocal tones combining embarrassment, defiance, sincerity, and a last-ditch attempt at con-artistry is very funny!). It's a Capra film that should definitely be better known.

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    1. GOM, yes, William's screen persona seems too slick to be completely effective at conveying the underlying crudity of the character. I've read that like Robson, he wasn't Capra's first choice, that he first thought of William Powell and James Cagney for Dave the Dude. I'm not sure either of these would have been any better, though. Powell would have been in the same situation as William trying to be convincing as a jumped-up lowlife, and I don't see Cagney being as convincing a dandy, or as believable being soft-hearted about Annie, as William. So maybe William was the best of the possible choices after all. He's an interesting actor, often playing good-bad characters. I especially like him in "Gold Diggers of 1933" and as a very regal-looking Julius Caesar in "Cleopatra."

      For me Robson is the heart of the movie. As I wrote, her range here is really impressive. I fully understand her Oscar nomination. She and that year's winner Katharine Hepburn later worked together in "Bringing Up Baby," where she was wonderful in a more typical role as Hepburn's rich aunt. She and Charlie Ruggles made quite a pair in that movie!

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  3. R.D., I haven't seen "Lady for a Day" in quite a while but in just a few days it will air on TCM and I will revisit it then. I'm not a great fan of Capra's best-known films, the ones that "about themes and not people," but have like the earlier films of his that I've seen, "Platinum Blonde," "The Bitter Tea of General Yen," "Lady for a Day" - of course, "It Happened One Night" - and I've always had a soft spot for "Lost Horizon" (all that heady idealism and Ronald Colman). I'm really looking forward to seeing May Robson once more in what must have been her premier film role. So rarely did older actresses get such plum roles. They still don't (Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren excepted).

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    1. Eve, I hope you enjoy revisiting the film when it airs on TCM. My favorite Capras are "It Happened One Night," "Lost Horizon," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and of course "It's a Wonderful Life." The other early Capra film that especially impressed me was "The Miracle Woman" with Barbara Stanwyck as a phony evangelist.

      I can't help wondering if Robson's age had something to do with her losing the Oscar to the very young Katharine Hepburn. Oscar voters seem to prefer young actresses to mature ones (with some exceptions like the ones you name). That Apple Annie is basically a character role and not a romantic lead probably didn't help her chances either. But Oscar or not, she's sensational here.

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  4. One of my favorite Frank Capra movies (though I must admit I like the later ones more than you do. Also, one quibble: Riskin didn't write "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", Sidney Buchman did), and also probably my favorite adaptation of a Damon Runyon story. As you rightfully point out, Ned Sparks' deadpan performance contributes to a lot of the film's humor ("ask them if they believe in fairy tales"), and I also love Guy Kibbee and Walter Connolly in their roles. I do confess this was the first film I ever saw William in, and I thought he did fine as Dave the Dude. He may act "to the manor born", but I feel the character has tried to put his origins aside, so it works. Great write-up.

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    1. You're right about "Mr. Smith" not being written by Riskin. Maybe that's why I like it better than the other Capra films of the late 30s. (Although I think James Stewart has a lot to do with the greater affection I have for this film than for some of Capra's other work.) Somehow I got the idea that Riskin had written all of Capra's films up to "John Doe." I'll go back and adjust the post to reflect this.

      This was also the first film I saw William in and having seen others since, I can see that it was not an entirely typical role for him. All the supporting character actors are great, for the most part doing their usual thing but exceptionally well matched to the role. Ned Sparks's skeptical Happy McGuire (!) really stood out for me too. He was an actor who could make humorlessness seem funny.

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  5. Another great review, RD - as I'm increasingly a fan of early Capra I was already keen to see this one, and am now even more so! Once again this is not available in the UK, but the new DVD from Inception which you mention is available very cheaply on import and the picture quality is said to be great, so I am ordering a copy and look forward to reading your review again once I have seen it. I'd also be interested to see Capra's own remake, 'A Pocketful of Miracles' - this is one of two films of his own that he remade, along with 'Broadway Bill' and 'Riding High'.

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    1. Judy, I watched the Inception DVD and the restoration is very good. I'm glad that smaller outfits are restoring more obscure films like this one. I saw "Broadway Bill" not long ago, and though it's not quite up to this one or "It Happened One Night," it's still a very enjoyable movie with "Penthouse" costars Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy reteamed and those familiar character actors Capra made such good use of. It also deals with some of Capra's familiar themes--a nonconformist rebelling against the stuffy rich, with Baxter rejecting his straitlaced fiancee for her free-spirited sister, rather in the style of "Holiday." I haven't seen its remake but did see "Pocketful of Miracles," but so many years ago I really don't remember it too well.

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    2. RD, I saw 'Broadway Bill' a while back and enjoyed it a lot too - Capra was disappointed with it because (he said in his autobiography) Warner Baxter was afraid of horses and some scenes had to be scrapped as a result. I haven't seen the remake with Bing Crosby as yet.

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  6. R.D. - Not sure what happened but I left a comment here earlier today. I must have screwed something up since it seemed to have disappeared. Anyway, I have not seen this but I did record it tonight on my DVR and will definitely get around to it. The remake, POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES is enjoyable without being anything special. As you may or may not know, I run hot and cold with Capra. I love some of his films like MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, ARSENIC AND OLD LACE and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Then there are films like MEET JOHN DOE where the Capra corn is a bit too much for me. Terrific review as always!!!

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    1. John, thank you. I believe I mentioned in an earlier reply the Capra movies I especially like. I do generally find something, sometimes quite a lot, to like in Capra's films of the 30s despite my reservations about aspects of some of them. His work from later decades I'm less enthusiastic about, the one exception being "It's a Wonderful Life," for me his best film. It's a one of a kind and something really special both for him and for movies in general. He always did seem to get good work from his actors, especially James Stewart, Jean Arthur, and Barbara Stanwyck. He also seemed to have a knack for casting supporting actors who were ideal for their roles. What I remember most about "Pocketful of Miracles" is that its concept seemed dated and its approach restrained for the early 60s--especially coming after something like "Some Like It Hot." He's said to have preferred it to "Lady for a Day."

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  7. This is an enjoyable film, one I have not seen in 20 years and need to revisit as I am a Capra fan. I remember reading that Capra was always involved with the casting of every role in his films, right down to the bit and background players. He had an intuition for who could play what and how they would work with each other. This film is no exception.

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    1. Filmboy, I can believe that Capra took special pains to get his casts just right, and his instinct for matching the actor to the role seemed acute. Without quite becoming an informal repertory company like John Ford and Preston Sturges's supporting casts, the same character actors did frequently appear in more than one Capra film. The leading roles, however, often didn't go to Capra's first choice, I suppose because those bigger stars were more in demand. It's interesting to read how many people turned down the leads in "It Happened One Night" even after Capra's success with "Lady for a Day."

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  8. Yes R.D., it has worn very well in fact, and was recently released on an attractive blu-ray, one I did acquire. Excellent framing here of the Depression era setting and in assessing the exceptional supporting cast. This was a film that could be credited with setting Capra on the comedic path, which of course yielded classic results. I also gree that the film's realism has mitiagted against the dating that has lessened a few other films of the era. Splendid work as always R.D.!

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    1. Sam, thank you. The Depression, which once seemed so distant, and films that deal with the effects of the Depression have taken on renewed relevance in recent years. Capra's early work has also gotten a lot more attention than it used to get because of the surge in interest in the films of the pre-Code era. Maybe that combined with the new release will give this one the recognition it deserves as the precursor of Capra's career-defining work of the next few years.

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  9. R.D., excellent review of a lesser-shown Capra film. In fact, his remake POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (which lacks the bite and borders on schmaltzy) appears much more often on TCM (thank goodness for SUTS). LADY FOR A DAY is a wonderfully crafted example of one of my favorite comedy subgenres in which a simply ruse becomes an elaborate scheme of deception. You made a great point with the comment that many Capra comedies "deal with subjects that are really not inherently funny." I think that's a key reason for their enduring appeal.

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    1. Thanks, Rick. The idea of deception through impersonation is one of the great plot concepts of both comedy and drama. While the unforeseen complications of the deception provide some of the comedy here, Capra seems to be just as interested in the social milieu all this is taking place in. Ultimately it probably comes from the Damon Runyon source material, but Capra seems amused that even though they're adversaries, both the gangsters and the cops are involved in an elaborate game and that in some ways they're not so different from each other. This seems closer to Preston Sturges-style comedy than the later, more familiar brand of Capra comedy.

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