Annie and Blake get caught up in the sham as they escort Louise (Jean Parker), her fiance Carlos (Barry Norton), and the Count (Walter Connelly), and soon Dave the Dude finds himself marshalling all of his criminal empire to convince the Count that his son's future in-laws are worthy. The best scenes occur between the gangster Happy and the butler (Halliwell Hobbs) that Dave the Dude hires for Annie's apartment. The butler gets the best lines, including the zinger directed at Happy: "If I had a choice of weapon with you, Sir, I'd choose grammar."

Unfortunately, the energy of the film runs out after the first two-thirds. The joy of seeing Dave the Dude turn Apple Annie and his gang of thugs into New York's finest falters, and we are left to contemplate what Capra has brought together. Dave the Dude is not a very interesting character; Warren William is too stiff an actor, and the part is too narrowly written, to keep up the pace. His part devolves into a hectoring brute, using kidnapping and threats of violence to get his way, and you never get any insight into why he might be carrying on the charade even after things get out of hand. Why would he risk arrest to help Annie? Annie herself is a fine character, but she's basically a straight (wo)man, and when the actors around her give up comedy, she loses her comedic potential. She's a sweet, stately woman, and it's a fine job of acting (and costuming and makeup) that transform her from the addled apple seller to the elegant and beautiful matron; her performance netted her an Oscar nomination (she lost to Katherine Hepburn in Morning Glory).

This was Frank Capra's breakout film; a year later, he made It Happened One Night, and for the next ten years, he was cream of Oscar's crop, winning three Best Director awards out of six nominations. His films are beloved by millions of Americans; we believe that we live in a classless society, and Capra's fables in which regular Joes take on the uppity and corrupt resonate with our national self-deception. There are dissenters: the noted critic Andrew Sarris accuses him of "populist demagoguery," while the curmudgeonly king of cinema biography, David Thompson, refers to the tyranny of Capra's high-minded approach to politics, evident most clearly in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Thompson points out that compromise is the bedrock of American politics, and Smith's blind refusal to accept that (and the film's tacit approval of his dedication) is a form of moral tyranny. I realize that I've strayed from the subject of Lady for a Day, but sometimes a film is most interesting for what it gets you thinking about. Umm... despite the film's lack of momentum toward the end, it's still perfectly watchable, and it's a good window on early Capra.
Capra was not bitter enough to carry through the fast-talking, arch attitude that he developed in the first half. This is, after all, the man who brought us such proletarian fantasies as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. His general theme, the little guy bucking the system, was known affectionately as "Capra-corn," and for good reason. I love some of his films, but I find some of their politics questionable. Capra's films worked under the simplistic duality where the down-to-earth poor were virtuous and the rich "society" people were crooks; it worked during the Depression, but it effectively prevented viewers from ever really being surprised by anything in his films. The surprise, incidentally, is that Capra preached good, old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism and the virtue of the poor while supposedly being a big admirer of Mussolini (according to Thompson's Biographical Dictionary of Film); the fact that Capra made documentaries during World War II denouncing Mussolini makes him a fascinating kind of hypocrite.