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SPOILER ALERT!
Lady for a Day is a 1933 comedy directed by Frank Capra. In trying to make sense of this movie, I discovered that the absurdity of its premise was completely unnecessary, for a perfectly reasonable alternative was available but deliberately rejected. To see what I mean, we must begin with the basic story as we find it in the movie.
Apple Annie, as the name indicates, peddles apples on the streets of New York. She is an alcoholic old woman, played by May Robson, who was about 75 years old at the time this movie was made. She has a daughter named Louise, who is just coming of age. She is played by Jean Parker, who was about 18 years old when this movie was made. So, assuming that the age of the characters is that of the actresses, that means that Apple Annie was around 57 years old when she gave birth to Louise. A woman of that age might reasonably expect to be past the point of getting pregnant, so Annie probably thought she could have sex without fear of ending up as an unwed mother, but so she did.
All we are told is that Louise has been raised in a convent in Spain ever since she was a baby. Annie writes her letters on stationery she steals from a fancy hotel, pretending to live there so that Louise will believe Annie is a wealthy woman in high society. She has led Louise to believe that her father passed away and that she has remarried, her present husband being Mr. E. Worthington Manville, who is rich and aristocratic. She explains that she is still unable to come to Spain for a visit on account of her health.
Louise is in love with a young man named Carlos, son of Count Alfonso Romero. The Count wants to meet Louise’s parents before giving his consent, so the Count, Carlos, and Louise are sailing to New York for that purpose. When Annie finds out about this, she is in a panic, for that means her daughter will find out the truth.
Dave the Dude (Warren William) has been buying apples from Annie for years because they bring him good luck. Fearing that he might lose his luck if anything happens to Annie, he decides to help her pretend to be a rich woman of high society. Things get more and more complicated, involving more and more people, until over a dozen of the Dude’s acquaintances are preparing to play various roles of the upper class.
Reporters start snooping around, so the Dude kidnaps three of them, intending to lock them in a room until the charade is over. However, the police are under political pressure to find the reporters, and eventually the Dude is arrested. He admits to the mayor, the governor, and other important people what is going on. They all decide to help out, so instead of the Dude’s friends pretending to be high society at a reception, the real high society shows up instead. The Count is satisfied and gives his consent. Carlos and Louise will be able to marry and live happily ever after.
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All right, now let’s back this up. A convent in Spain? This is mentioned only once, and I guess we are supposed to accept it without question. Well, I couldn’t accept it, so while watching this movie, I kept trying to make sense of it. What follows is the best I can do:
Annie has a baby in a Catholic hospital. She tells a priest that she is not married. The priest says that she can give the baby up for adoption. But Annie wants to remain the baby’s mother, so she asks if the baby could be raised in a convent instead. The priest says there is a convent right there in New York that would take the baby.
Annie says that will never do because when Louise grows up, she will find out that she is the bastard daughter of a woman who sells apples on the streets of New York. Annie wants to stay in touch with Louise as her mother, but only at a distance, so that their only communication with each other will be by mail. To that end, Annie asks if her baby can be sent out of the country instead. The priest checks into it, and the next day tells her there is a convent in Spain that will raise her baby. So, the baby is put on a ship and sent on her way.
As the years pass, Annie writes letters in which she lies about how she and her husband, Louise’s father, are wealthy members of New York’s finest. To keep Louise from wondering why her father never writes her a letter, Annie tells her that he passed away. But eventually Annie says she has remarried, to another man of equal wealth and social prominence.
When Louise comes of age, she and Carlos fall in love and want to get married. He tells his father, asking him for his consent. They have the following conversation:
Count Romero: Since Louise’s mother is a rich woman, why didn’t she raise Louise herself instead of sticking her in a convent?
Carlos: I don’t know. She writes Louise letters telling her how much she loves her.
Count Romero: If she loves her so much, why didn’t she want her around?
Carlos: I never asked Louise how she feels about that.
Count Romero: Doesn’t she resent the fact that her mother abandoned her? Her mother didn’t even want a convent in New York to raise her, where her mother could at least go over once a month for a little visit, telling Louise to stop complaining about the food and just do whatever the nuns tell her to do. But even that would be too much trouble, I suppose, so her mother sends her over here. Then for eighteen years she uses that lame excuse about her health to avoid having to come over for a visit.
Carlos: So, will you give your consent?
Count Romero: I don’t think I want you marrying into a family like that, but just to be fair, I guess we could all go over to America for a visit, and maybe I can get some answers to my questions.
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The movie is based on a short story, “Madame La Gimp,” by Damon Runyon. So, I decided to read it to see if there is anything about a convent in that story. There isn’t. Madame La Gimp corresponds to Apple Annie in the movie. Her home country is Spain. After coming to America, she became a Spanish dancer of some note on Broadway. And as we later find out, she married a man who was also from Spain. They had a daughter, Eulalie, corresponding to Louise. Madame La Gimp felt she could not properly raise a daughter while working as a dancer, but her sister, who lives in Spain, was happy to raise Eulalie instead.
One day Madame La Gimp met with an accident, causing her to walk with a limp, hence the epithet, which put an end to her career as a dancer. She took to drink, her marriage broke up, and she became a peddler. Not wanting her daughter to know to what depths she had fallen, she lied about her situation in letters to her, pretending to be well off.
In other words, it all makes sense now. Frank Capra had this perfectly reasonable explanation for Annie’s situation available to him, but he chose not to use it, preferring instead the illogical business about a convent. Even when he remade this movie as Pocketful of Miracles (1961), after he had time to reflect on it, he still kept the business about a convent instead of letting Annie’s sister raise her, as in the short story. Perhaps Capra wanted Louise to be raised in a convent because he was a Catholic, and he felt this change in the story gave it the proper religious tone.
There are a couple of other differences between the short story and the movie that might as well be noted, as long as we are here. First of all, in the short story, the friends of the Dude are the ones that pass themselves off as high society, satisfying the Spanish nobleman whose son wants to marry Eulalie. But the son and Eulalie elope, so his consent becomes moot anyway. There is nothing about kidnapping reporters, and the real members of the New York upper class are not involved. Had the movie stayed with the short story, allowing the Dude’s friends to pass themselves off as the fashionable elite, that would have allowed for more humorous situations. By having actual members of the upper class be at the reception, the possibilities for humor are forgone in favor of sentimentalism, or what film critics refer to as Capra-corn.
Second, the Dude’s interest in Annie’s problem seems to be completely selfish, in that he is only concerned about the good luck her apples provide him and not in Annie herself. In the short story, the Dude is referred to as kindhearted. He helps Madame La Gimp simply because he feels sorry for her.
Why this change in motive? Some people have a hard time accepting the fact that it is only human nature to care about others. They cannot be satisfied unless they can sniff out some underlying motive of selfishness in every apparent act of altruism: the need to feel superior, a desire to impress others with a show of generosity, an attempt to curry favor with God in hopes of getting into Heaven, or just silly superstition, as in this case with the apples. Maybe Capra was of this sort. But for Damon Runyon, there was nothing problematic about the Dude’s kindness at all, no further explanation being needed than a genuine feeling of sympathy.
Finally, we are used to seeing queer flashes in Pre-Code movies, but the one in this movie is unique. In order to pass Annie off as upper class, the Dude knows that she will need a complete makeover, consisting of a hairdo, makeup, and a whole new wardrobe. To that end, Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell) and several other women take Annie into a bedroom. A man named Pierre starts to go in with them. Since Annie may end up having all of her clothes removed to make way for new stuff, including her underwear presumably, the Dude tells Pierre he can’t go in there. Pierre turns around and gestures effeminately, while Missouri Martin assures the Dude that it is all right. The Dude shrugs, now realizing that Pierre is a homosexual. As such, Pierre is permitted to go into the bedroom with the women, the idea being that his lack of interest in women sexually means that his viewing Annie’s naked body will not infringe on her modesty.
Conservatives worried about transgender women in the ladies’ room take note.