damon
runyonland
all about us
by Douglas Messerli
Robert
Riskin (screenplay, based on a story by Damon Runyon), Frank Capra (director) Lady for a Day / 1933
Hal
Kanter and Harry Tugend (screenplay, based on a story by Damon Runyon and
Robert Riskin’s script), Frank Capra (director) Pocketful of Miracles / 1961
For years my companion Howard and I have
preferred Frank Capra’s remake of his renowned Damon Runyon adaptation of
“Madame La Gimp,” Pocketful of Miracles, over his 1933 film version, Lady for a Day. Sure, the 1961 remake is
all Hollywood and about as sweetly syrupy a confection as ever made—that is,
after all to be expected in Capra’s cornball vision of American life, where
everyone defines himself as a hick compared to the snooty, wealthy snobs. And
yes, the opening Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cohn theme song, sung by a
children’s chorus, makes any music lover want to turn tail and run from the
theater. The pouting coos of the young Ann-Margret’s Louise are nearly
unbearable; Glenn Ford’s gee-gosh rendition of the supposedly suave Dave the
Dude often produces viewer cringe; and even Peter Falk’s wise-cracking
cynicisms seem to be from another movie. I even admit that Hope Lange’s Queenie
Martin, the dancing speak-easy owner desperate to get married and move back to
Silver Springs (a.k.a. the DC suburb Silver Spring)—a desire never once
expressed by the tougher Missouri Martin of the original—seems utterly ludicrous.
And the whole film is just too long!
By
comparison, Lady for a Day is coarse
and crude. And once Capra convinces us through that Pocketful of Miracles scene that such magic is his subject, we
believe that Dave the Dude can truly save the day by bringing with him, at the
very last moment (with Hudgins reassuring the Count, “Nobody arrives first,
sir. They all arrive last”), the real
New York Chief of Police, the city's Mayor and the state Governor ready to
claim Mrs. Manville as their friend, replacing the Dude’s clumsy henchman and
Queenie’s tough molls.
The
other day, however, in preparation for my several pieces on Damon Runyon
stories adapted into films, I again watched, after some years of neglect, the
1933 black-and-white version, and, for the first time, had to agree with most
critics that Lady for a Day was
superior. First of all, this film, with all its rough edges, does seem somehow
fresher, freed from the glossy Hollywood imitations of actors like Hope Lange,
Ann-Margret, and Glenn Ford. Without the various plot complications of the
remake—the Dude’s negotiations with the Chicago Mob, Martin’s desires to go
straight—the story straight-forwardly focuses, moreover, on Apple Annie,
instead of flying off in the many directions
of the 1961 cut.
The
tough-girl image of Glenda Farrell’s Missouri Martin seems utterly believable
compared with Lange’s saintly sinner. And while Ford’s Dave the Dude often
appears like a befuddled office worker, Warren William’s subtle elegance makes
one comprehend how he’s been awarded his moniker, putting him in a league with
Runyonesque fast-talking conmen like Judge Blake, who Guy Kibbee played with almost
as much panache as Thomas Mitchell.
As
great as Bette Davis was in Pocketful of
Miracles, May Robson, older and more irascible than her reincarnation, is
also more sure-footed in her role. When Robson gins it up, one truly believes
she loves the stuff. When she sends her cat flying, one becomes convinced that
she has truly kicked the cat. As marvelous as Davis is, there is something too
elegant about her Annie and too tenuous about her Mrs. E. Worthington Manville.
One need only compare the moment when the Manville figure realizes that she must
reveal her true existence to the Count. Entering the room, Robson restates her
understanding of why he has traveled to America to meet and evaluate Louise’s
family with a speech something to the effect: “You wanted to know all about us—Oh, I don’t blame you. It would
terrible if after the marriage you found out….” Robson reads those lines quite assertively,
hinting at both her comprehension and her disdain for the Count’s petty snobbery;
and for a second, one truly does believe she is willing to spill the beans,
that she will finally speak the truth. Davis says the same words, but pauses a
second or so, her voice somewhat shaking just before her denial of any blame,
and in that pause she reveals a sense of a deep inadequacy, almost a sorrowful
expression of her own inferiority which might force to admit what will destroy
her daughter’s life. But in that pause, as poignant as it is, the viewer also
realizes she will never complete her sentence, she cannot reveal her true self.
While Robson’s Annie is a proud being who despises the very class distinctions
she is forced to act out, Davis’ Manville is ashamed of her true self. Capra’s Lady for a Day represents precisely what
its title suggests, a woman who becomes a lady just for a day; for, at heart,
she is a beggar who is proud of her profession. The same director’s Pocketful of Miracles utterly reveals
the later version for what it is as well: a magic bag of tricks. Can one truly
imagine, at the end of the second film, when, as the boat pulls away Davis
commands her beggar friends to get to work, that she can ever truly return to
her life in the streets, that she will again fall from the heights of the
imperious beauty to again become a hag, or, as Runyon characterizes her, “a gimp?”
Finally, Lady for a Day has a
treasure that even outshines the genius of Edward Everett Horton’s bemused
butler: Ned Sparks as Happy McGuire, the kind of sour cynic about whom one can
quip, as does Missouri Martin, “Happy, if you break anything, be sure it’s your
neck,” while at the very same moment breaking out in a guffaw. If there was
ever anyone born to utter Runyon’s Dadaist-like Americanisms, Sparks was the
man! The interchange between that film’s butler, Halliwell Hobbes and Happy
says everything you need to know about why Capra succeeded the first time round:
Happy McGuire:
That should be a cinch.
Butler: I beg your
pardon, Sir.
Happy McGuire: I
said that should be a leadpipe cinch!
Butler: If I had
choice of weapons with you, Sir, I’d choose
grammar.
Compare that with Horton’s admission in his
role as butler: “I love a good fairy tale,” and you can understand why a
director devoted to self-deluded American dreamers of the middle class
preferred the remake.
Los
Angeles, May 20, 2012
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