Lady for a Day (1933)

Description

A Cinderella fairy tale set in the early 1930s, Lady For A Day is a delightfully charming mix of drama and comedy that earned four Academy Award nominations and propelled Frank Capra to the top ranks of popular filmmakers. This was Capra's first major success, establishing the model for the "Capra-esque" films that followed and his first collaboration with legendary screenwriter Robert Riskin, a partnership that produced such Oscar-winning classics as It Happened One Night, Mr. Dees Goes To Town and You Can't Take It With You. Apple Annie, a cantankerous New York City fruit peddler, has been pretending that she's a high-society matron in letters to her grown daughter now living overseas. When her daughter and aristocratic fiancé plan to visit, Annie panics and turns to her best customer, Dave the Dude, a racketeering gangster. Dave and his cronies hilariously transform Annie into the grandest of dames and cast themselves as her entourage! Based on Damon Runyon's (Guys and Dolls) short story "madame La Gimp," Lady For A Day is "a twentieth century fairy tale…and a really great movie" (The Hollywood Reporter)! Frank Capra would revisit this story as the remake, A Pocketful of Miracles (1961), his final film.