Customer Reviews

Lady for a Day [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This wonderful film is a total disaster in its DVD format. Frank Capra Junior calls it a restored print which is a joke. The film is often dark, details are hard to see and there are sprocket holes, white spots and all kinds of detractions in the film. How could Image and Capra release this mess on DVD! This outstanding film deserves much better than is offered.

I should have listened to the other person who mentioned scratches on the movie. However, while he found them only slightly distracting...I found them to be so disruptive that I lost track of the movie. This print was transferred from a copy that had severe sprocket tooth scratches. These scratches lasted for almost 20 minutes.

While my rating of the movie itself would be 3-4 stars, I cannot recommend...even to fans of the movie...to buy this copy. I wouldn't even be happy if I had bought it for under 10 bucks....but at this steep price, I advise against it.

Lady for a Day is a fine Capra film. The story concerns a street vendor Apple Annie (May Robson) who has deceived her daughter that she is a High Society lady. The daughter, who has been living in Spain, decides to visit and what's more brings along her prospective fiancé plus his father, a Spanish count. So as not to scupper her daughter's marriage, Annie must enlist the help of her underworld friends to continue the deception. The film is at times very funny with a tone which looks ahead to the Screwball comedies of the later thirties. It is also often rather moving, with May Robson's terrific performance eliciting a great deal of sympathy. The rest of the cast is equally fine. Warren William as Dave the Dude is that most unusual of characters a gangster with a heart of gold. Guy Kibbee, familiar from so many thirties films, is always fun to watch. This time he plays a pool shark who agrees to pretend he is Apple Annie husband. Jean Parker, as Apple Annie's daughter Louise, will be familiar to anyone who has seen the 1933 version of Little Women in which she plays Beth. Her role in Lady for a Day could hardly match that role, but she still performs well with her memorably unusual voice. She also looks absolutely stunning. It's even possible to glimpse a young Ward Bond, as a policeman on a horse, obtaining an apple from Annie.

The print used for the Image DVD is not perfect. The main problem is that towards the end of the film, the right hand edge of the picture has been damaged so that white marks appear on the print. This only affects a small portion of the picture, but it is a little bit distracting. For the most part however, the print is clear and sharp. Even when there is some damage, the rest of the picture is fine. I have seen any number of thirties and forties films which have survived in worse condition than Lady for a Day. Moreover the sound quality on this DVD is above average for a film from this period. The wonderful dialogue is easily audible and the soundtrack has very little background noise. As an extra the DVD includes a commentary by Frank Capra Junior. This is a DVD which Capra fans should enjoy.

Not a good transfer but the price is still affordable, and I don't think the white streaks made the film totally unwatchable. Wonder how something like that happens and how it could be restored?

Warren William, the leading character actor, is dapper and sophisticated, funny and downright hot. Underrated for many years, Warren William's films are undergoing a revival in film circles today, coinciding with a renewed interest in so-called "Pre Code" films, of which he was just about the biggest star in the world, for a brief time. This picture is just one of five he starred in that were released in 1933, and the actor stayed pretty busy, even as the quality of his movies went downhill, until his too early death in 1948. What he had to offer was a combination of assets, a particular alchemy he shared with someone like Clark Gable. Where Gable was straight up, however, Warren William was sort of shifty, you didn't really know where you were with him. If both Gable and William offered Depression audiences slightly competing versions of optimism, William was also far more capable than Gable of showing life's bleaker side. He was one man whom the heroine actually might not be able to make over into her bourgeois hero.

Capra captures William's anarchic, slightly dangerous spirit well as Dave the Dude in LADY FOR A DAY. His interactions with Glenda Farrell, who plays Missouri the Texas Guinan-style nightclub hostess with the mostest, are clever studies in sex appeal and a knowing, sort of alcoholic ease with each other. And his compulsion for the apples that May Robson provides (they bring him luck in his gambling ventures) is just that sort of obsessive twist that Warren William could really go to town on.

I like the remake too, with Glenn Ford and Hope Lange, but let's face it, Glenn Ford just didn't have the (only slightly hidden) nuttiness Dave the Dude's just got to have.

Sad to say, I have to agree with the previous reviews of the dvd. I saw this film on AMC years ago and recently rented the dvd, only to discover a somewhat inferior print. That's not to say, however, that it was unwatchable. "Lady for a Day" is still a great movie (way better than the watered-down remake "A Pocketful of Miracles") and deserves a larger audience. Until a better dvd master comes along, I'll endorse this one.

LADY FOR A DAY is worth seeing if only to see that 1933 Columbia Pictures logo which introduces the film. This movie deserves a cluster of stars, the Frank Capra 50 star rendition of Damon Runyon's wonderfully Broadway story of Apple Annie. The characters are in the tradition of the Lemon Drop Kid--Moose Moran, and Oxford Charlie; in this movie it's Dave the Dude. Dude, played by Warren William, is portrayed as Runyon would have expected him to be portrayed. And what a supporting cast to "Apple Annie," May Robson; cast including Walter Connolly as the Spanish Count, and Ned Sparks, with his monotone delivery, is Dude's mobster sidekick. Of course the brassy, nightclub bombshell, moll-to-be Glenda Farrell rounded out the bunch of Broadway mugs. It just wouldn't have been a 1930s Manhattan movie without the New York celebrities including Irish cops, the Mayor and Governor. Their evening police escort with motorcycle sirens and headlamps blazing was in the Grand B movie tradition for a Grand A movie. It was a fairy tale as weren't all of Damon Runyon's tales? Well written, well cast, well done. Take it from Dude's muscle-man, Shakespeare, "Ee-say, is-thay, ovie-may-- Or else! Yer may find yerself takin' a ride up tah 42nd Street.

this is the original version of frank capras better-remembered "pocketful of miracles", about a bag lady who has been sending her child to convent school in europe and is now faced with the prospect of her grown daughter coming to visit her supposedly grande dame mother in new york. the latter movie filled in alot of detail, but softened the sting of the depression-era original. i like both, but this is the better one.

is the basis of this movie based on a Damon Runyon story. An old apple seller sent her daughter to the continent years ago, and has been writing her fantastical letters about a high society life she leads back in New York City. When the daughter writes that she will visit with her royal beau and his skeptical relative, the old woman is distraught. Here's where the colorful Runyon characters step in, and put together a sham high society life in hopes that the old lady will pass muster with the doubting relatives. Warren William headlines as the gambler who masterminds the charade, in a departure from his usual high society image he projects himself. May Robson brings real pathos to her role as the apple seller--there's a scene at the end when she greets guests at her charade reception where the glint of a tear in her eye brings a tear to yours, guaranteed.

Lady For a Day is about a woman named Apple Annie (May Robson). She has an illigitimate daughter who lives overseas; her daughter believes she is wealthy and married, which is okay because she will never find out. However, Annie's daughter wants to get married to a high-class man from Spain whose family wants to meet hers before they are wed. Annie is in a terrible spot and plans to fake her own death until she is able to win the support of several in her community to impersonate her wealthy alter ego.

Robson is great in her part, a sympathetic and dynamic character whose emotions ring absolutely true throughout. Guy Kibbee plays a unique role as an intelligent man who displays class and wit, unlike his standard drunken parts. Warren William also plays against type as a charitable man. Glenda Farrell has a small, forgettable part, but she looks more beautiful than ever.

This film displays the uplifting spirit that Capra's films became known for, a symbol of a by-gone era, one that many will not let themselves forget.

This is a wonderful 1933 Frank Capra film. All of the complaints about the scratches and print blemishes are a little carried away. This is a far cry from a public domain-VHS-transferred-to-DVD-disaster that some companies release. Given that Columbia no longer owns the film (or presumably have the negative), we're lucky to even see it! I've seen much worse quality from the major studios with releases to DVD of films from the late 20s-early 30s. I still have my old Criterion laserdisc of this title, and must say that the transfer used for this DVD is an improvement.

The real crime is that Amazon ships movies out these days in ENVELOPES! Yes, this $[...] DVD arrived in a bubble-wrap lined envelope that looked like it had been beaten to Hell. And, of course, the DVD had been jarred from the spindle and was loose inside the case upon arrival. Also, as expected, the disc surface was scratched all to Hell. Of course, it plays OK, so I can't really return it. For $[...], though, you'd at least expect a new, shiney disc surface. Shame on Amazon for their continued use of this shoddy shipping practice. The reason? It's cheap!! At least in stores, I can make sure the disc is not loose inside. I would never buy a copy of something in a store that contained a loose disc!