Pocketful of Miracles

Annie, an old woman selling apples on the street in New York, has spent years writing to the daughter she raised in a Spanish boarding school as though she were a society lady. When the daughter arrives in New York with her fiancé and his father, a count, the lie is about to collapse. Dave the Dude, a gangster who treats Annie's apples as lucky, steps in and mobilises the whole city to make her genuinely a society woman for a few days. Frank Capra directed. It was his last film. The source is Damon Runyon's 1929 story Madame La Gimp and Robert Riskin's 1933 screenplay, meaning Capra remade his own Lady for a Day. Bette Davis plays Annie and Glenn Ford plays Dave, with Hope Lange and Arthur O'Connell. Ann-Margret plays Davis's daughter in her first film role. The atmosphere on set was bad. Capra was in constant conflict with Glenn Ford, who was both star and co-producer, and Ford had a feud of his own with Bette Davis. In his autobiography Capra described the production as shaped in the fires of discord and filmed in an atmosphere of pain, strain and loathing. The film did not earn back its cost and Capra never made another. Who it is for: viewers who like Capra's fairy-tale optimism and Bette Davis. Who it is not for: anyone who has seen the 1933 version. The remake is longer, more decorated and loses the plainness of the original.