Ned Sparks – Movie Musings

Capra’s charming comedy is really a sort of proto-Ealing film, and certainly a lot of fun

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Warren William (Dave the Dude), May Robson (Apple Annie), Guy Kibbee (Henry D Blake), Glenda Farrell (Missouri Martin), Ned Sparks (Happy Maguire), Jean Parker (Louise), Barry Norton (Carlos), Walter Connolly (Count Romero), Nat Pendleton (Shakespeare), Halliwell Hobbes (Butler), Hobart Bosworth (Governor)

Based on a short story called Madame La Gimp (probably wise to change that title), Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day (for which he received his first Oscar nomination) fits neatly into his wheelhouse in one sense with its feel-good, comic sentimentality. But it also feels rather like an Ealing film made before the studio even existed. It’s a film where ordinary folks, some of them not exactly saints, with a mix of cunning and luck, run circles around the powers that be in the name of a good cause. It’s also a sharp, witty, fast-paced comedy with a happy ending. It’s a real crowd-pleasing comedy.

Apple Annie (May Robson) is an ageing fruit seller in New York City, who has seen better days but now lives in a rundown flat. But she’s doesn’t want the daughter, who she gave up for adoption decades ago, to know that. Using headed notepaper from a posh hotel, she has spun her a story for years that Annie is a well-to-do society figure in the Big Apple. So, it’s a disaster when daughter Louise (Jean Parker) writes back saying she’s engaged to the son of a Spanish count and is bringing him to New York to meet her mother. Apple Annie’s story seems doomed – but her salvation is that she is the lucky charm of rogueish gambler gangster Dave the Dude (Warren William) who never does a deal without buying one of her apples first. Can Dave ‘s money and his crew – with the help of a borrowed apartment – act out her fantasy for real?

Lady for a Day becomes a charming, fast-paced, semi-farce with Dave’s rough-and-tumble crew constantly trying to keep a step ahead of Louise’s prospective husband and father-in-law finding out the truth. They are helped by a large group of semi-vagrants from Apple Annie’s neighbourhood, all presented with an endearingly, non-patronising sense of supportive community. This leads to a constant parade of hustling their visitors from place-to-place, intercepting phone calls to the Spanish consulate and roping in a parade of New Yoick hustlers to play society grandees at a soiree. All of this while trying to stay one step ahead of the police and press, who are both convinced if the Dude is chucking this much money and people around, he must be planning a big score.

It’s the sort of charm you can’t imagine being allowed to fly even a year later: gangsters who don’t for a single-minute consider renouncing their life of making money from illicit deals (among other things), presented as put-upon, but-decent guys, bending over backwards to make an old woman’s dream come true. Lady for a Day doesn’t for a second suggest there should be a price to pay for their naughty day jobs. ‘Worse’ than that, in true Earling style, it presents the police chasing after them as dumb flat foots, hopelessly clueless and off-the-pace. Hard to believe the Hays Code passing that.

But it really works here, especially since Capra directs with phenomenal zip and wit. You could imagine a version of Lady for a Day weighted down in cheap sentimentality (in fact, you don’t need to – Capra made it in 1961 calling it A Pocketful of Miracles), but instead this is genuinely funny with well-drawn characters. Warren William is very good as the increasingly put-upon Duke, who can’t believe he’s been pulled into funding this good deed, but commits to it with world-weary resignation. He ‘sparks’ brilliantly off Ned Sparks’ rat-a-tat, cynical fixer flummoxed by his boss turning ‘Father Christmas’ but as determined to deliver on the deal as he would be on any other criminal enterprise.

And refreshingly Lady for a Day’s plot still has an air of criminal enterprise about it. They aren’t above threatening Halliwell Hobbes’ excellently dry butler with a bit of physical harm if he doesn’t play his part to perfection (doesn’t stop Hobbes getting in a cuttingly witty line about Sparks’ poor grammar). When a trio of journalists cause problems, they kidnap them (only for a few days they promise!). Difficult people are quietly strong-armed out of the way. Capra – working with a typically excellent Robert Riskin script – gets the tone just right, with just enough whimsical, Wildean farce.

This also plays into several set-pieces. The planning of the elaborate soiree is a particular gem. Packed with a parade of gamblers, tough guys and molls – all lacking even a drop of sophistication – they are carefully given a named role (one of them protests playing the Secretary of Defence – “a secretary is a secretary”) and a single line of high-styled dialogue, which they require hours of careful coaching to not fumble. The entire idea is excellent and superbly executed. Their dialogue is all provided by Guy Kibbee’s (quite excellent here) English gent-turned pool hustler, ‘playing’ Annie’s husband and enjoying a taste of the high life – while, in another memorable scene, discovering his pool hustling skills are more than a little helpful to the cause.

The film also works because it has a lovely, heartfelt performance by May Robson (Oscar nominated) as Annie. There is a wonderful Dickensian quality to Robson, with Apple Annie a Mrs Gamp with a tragic past (there are several references that she was once a lot more affluent than shifting apples on the street). Robson makes her sweet but sparky but never loses track of her vulnerability and fear that the truth may be discovered. She makes the character feel real and grounded, meaning the scenes with her daughter (which could have tipped into sentimentality) are genuinely quite touching.

It’s another successful beat in a fast-paced film that is entertaining, genuinely quite heart-warming and stuffed with excellent performances from a parade of studio players grabbing the sort of roles they wouldn’t normally get by the scruff of the neck. With its compassionate regard for the little guys, while not presenting either vagrants patronisingly or gangsters naively, it constantly entertains. It’s got a pre-Code daring about it (there is a neat joke about a gay hairdresser and a hint that Annie had her child out of wedlock, neither of which would have flown years later) and in its comic wit and fast-paced energy it’s one of Capra’s finest. Sure, it ends before Annie has to return to her previous life (and I’ve no idea what they would do if Louise visited again) but the film is as much about spinning a charming fantasy for us as it is for the characters.

Less a musical, more about a musical – but a delightful love letter to the joy of theatre

Director: Lloyd Bacon

Cast: Warner Baxter (Julian Marsh), Bebe Daniels (Dorothy Brock), George Brent (Pat Denning), Ruby Keeler (Peggy Sawyer), Guy Kibbee (Abner Dillon), Dick Powell (Billy Lawler), Una Merkel (Lorraine Fleming), Ginger Rogers (Anytime Annie), George E Stone (Andy Lee), Ned Sparks (Barry), Robert McWade (Jones), Allen Jenkins (MacElroy)

Jones and Barry are putting on a show! The cry lights up Broadway (in an impressively staged series of quick-cuts, cross fades and super-impositions of the excited souls). And 42^ndStreet is all about the creation of that show, from the signing of the contracts to the opening night and the spontaneous making of a star. If it feels, watching 42^nd Street that it’s made up of nothing but theatrical cliches… then it’s because most of them became cliches from excessive re-use after 42^nd Street showed they worked so well – and made such a hugely entertaining film along the way.

The show is Pretty Lady, to be directed by Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter), the finest director (and friendliest tyrant) on Broadway who needs the money after losing a packet in the Crash. He’s not the only one struggling in Depression-era America: the competition to land a job as chorus girl is fierce. So, it’s a lucky chance that debutante Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) lands a gig. The star is Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels), a vaudeville veteran trying to make it as a serious Broadway actor and currently the squeeze of the shows’ wealthy financier Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) – although she is still seeing her old partner Pat Denning (George Brent). But will Dorothy make it through the drama to opening night – or will Peggy need to step up to save the day?

It’s not a surprise that of course she does, but then Julian’s final words to her (“You’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!”) is the film’s most famous moment. As well as launching a thousand backstage dramas, 42^nd Street is remembered as a musical. But there is actually precious little music in it. We have to wait almost 45 minutes before the first song (Dorothy’s rendition of ‘You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me’) and the final fifteen until we see the bulk of Busby Berkeley’s choreography. Other than that, this is very entertaining soapy, backstage drama with romantic entanglements. It’s a more film about the stressful theatrical alchemy involved in making a musical, rather than a musical itself – there is no ‘putting my feelings into song’ here.

And it’s taking place in Depression-era desperation. Everyone needs a job – that’s why they are so excited about hearing there is a show in town. That plays into the family atmosphere behind the scenes. After all everyone needs the show to be a success, and if that means roping in a few gangsters to get a wayward star back into line so be it. Much like, in fact, 42^nd Street itself, coming to the screen after a glut of musical flops (perhaps that’s why there is so little actual musical content in it). The film zeroes in refreshingly and lovingly on the hard work, dedication and family atmosphere that can grow up in theatre, where everyone is working towards a common goal – and why I, a veteran of more than my share of putting a show on, felt a real soft spot for it growing.

And there is support, for all the bitchy moaning behind the scenes. Julian Marsh may tyrannically insist on absolute perfection – rehearsing through the night, waking the piano player when needed – but, it’s all to service a common goal. When emergency hits, the company flocks around and support each other. When one of their number triumphs there will be more congratulations than there are jealousies: even Dorothy will lay aside any personal feelings to support the new star. 42^nd Street really captures the sense that behind the curtain in the theatre a little world of its own is created, one which can be very loving in its own unique way.

It’s also a world, with more than a few sexual escapades, something hard to overlook in a film as full of chorus girl’s legs as this (the chorus girls are largely hired on the basis of how good those legs look). Dorothy is effectively trading her favours for a career leg-up from the clueless Dillner, while sticking with true love Denning. Denning, jealous, conducts his own speculative flirtation with Peggy (in a fun sequence, her landlady throws her out for daring to bring Pat home for a coffee – while behind her another chorus girl smuggles out her lover with an illicit kiss). Anytime Annie didn’t get her nickname for her dancing, Lorraine is happy to leverage her relationship with dance director Andy Lee and Lee himself (it’s implied) is the willing subject of Julian’s attentions.

In the midst of this, poor Peggy feels rather naïve. Sure, she may be bouncing between unlooked for attentions from a young member of the company and leading young man Dick Powell, but a passing possibility of romance with George Brent’s cuckolded partner (in every sense) to Bebe Daniel’s star leaves her flustered. Brent’s intentions may well be noble, but left alone with him in his apartment, Peggy is sweetly nervous and locks her door after she is chivalrously conveyed to the spare bedroom by Brent, as if scared she may give into temptation. Hilariously they are only in his apartment, after his calling on her is mistaken for a dalliance by her landlady, who throws them both out while boasting she never misses a trick – all while, in the back of the shot, another tenant quietly ushes her beau out of the door.

All of this gives some lovely opportunity to its actors, and there are several delightful turns in 42^nd Street. Not least in the chorus, where Una Merkel has a wonderfully playful flirtatiousness and Ginger Rogers gives her monocle-clad Anytime Annie a rogueish sexiness. Guy Kibbee’s moronically uncultivated sugar daddy gets several good laughs at his boorish cluelessness. If Ruby Keeler at times seem a bit unnuanced as the lead (there has long been some rather mixed feelings about her slightly heavy-footed dancing) and Dick Powell is eminently forgettable as her love interest, there is more than enough class from Baxter’s stressed out director, George Brent is very fine and Bebe Daniels invests Dorothy Brock with just enough vulnerability under the diva exterior to always leave you rooting for her (she is, after all, just as desperate for work as the meanest chorus girl).

It’s a film put together with flair – the early montage is pacily and flashily assembled – and a great deal of wit (producer Darryl F Zanuck and Berkely often gain the lion’s share of the credit for its pace, wit and zip although I feel some credit must go to experienced director-for-hire Lloyd Bacon). The final dance numbers are expertly done and very well filmed by Berkely, including a point where the camera glides under a parade of leg arches. But above all, it’s a heart-warming and witty tale that pulls back the romantic curtain of theatre to reveal – well an equally romantic view of the camaraderie and magic that brings a show to the stage. But it would be a hard heart that could not find something to smile at here.