Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Today we follow the lovely Ann-Margret over from THE CINCINNATI KID to her first screen appearance, 1961’s Frank Capra comedy/drama POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES.
This is a fine movie, but I had a lot of trouble staying interested in it. It’s a cute story about a gangster rising to the top of the heap named Dave “The Dude” Conway, played by the always dependable Glenn Ford, who has to juggle a big charade while staring down The King of the underground in a power move to control the city.
The charade involves passing off a local dirt poor apple seller/street hustler as a member of high society. This character, an old woman named Apple Annie, is played by Bette Davis in a very elegant and sympathetic performance. She has a daughter she hasn’t seen since her early childhood. Stealing stationary from a local ritzy hotel, Apple Annie keeps a pen pal relationship going with her daughter, painting a fairy tale version of herself.
Apple Annie is the Queen of the streets, leading every deaf, handicapped and/or midget peddler. This is her immediate family and they all thrive on getting letters back from Annie’s daughter, each getting a turn to read over it, like she was their own daughter.
Apple Annie’s apples are promised to bring luck and Glenn Ford buys one, tipping heavily, early in the film when he’s a nobody. That very day, he meets the woman he loves, inherits a club and combines the two, making his love (Hope Lange) a showgirl. The business booms and he always gives credit for that to Apple Annie’s lucky apples.
Of course, Ford isn’t exactly a clean dude. He uses the club as a front for bootlegging and when prohibition ends he’s left to either go into retirement or establish himself in the underground. But he can’t face the big boss is he doesn’t have his lucky apple and that’s where his troubles really begin.
Turns out Annie’s in at the hotel is caught grabbing a letting from her daughter, which he usually delivers to Annie himself and is fired. She is able to get the letter and the news is both great and horrible.
The good news is that Annie’s daughter, Louise (Ann-Margret), has met the man of her dreams and they intend to get married. The bad news is she’s bringing them to New York to meet her.
Annie hits the bottle and disappears, causing The Dude to go searching for her, desperate for the luck he’ll need going into this big meeting.
He is convinced to help this poor woman because of many factors. One, the luck he gets from the apple is kind of a karma thing. He pays $5 per apple, allowing Annie to send money to her daughter, keeping up the charade, so if Annie is distraught and he can’t help her in overpaying for the fruit then the luck won’t be there. Another reason is his girl, who wants to settle down and get him out of a life of crime. Hope Lange opens her heart to Annie and she insists. Plus, Ford isn’t a bad guy. He’s no tough crime lord. He feels for the woman, too.
So the second half of the movie is Ford putting off the big boss in order to create this false existence for this poor woman, setting her up in a deluxe penthouse at the hotel she was just recently escorted out of for making a scene about her daughter’s letter, giving Annie a full make-over and even finding someone to stand in as her invented husband, in the form of a local billiard hustler/judge, played with childish energy by Thomas Mitchell.
The last act of the movie is Ford running around trying to put out fires, keep the illusion going and all the while finding new ways to delay the big boss.
Everybody is quite likable, especially Bette Davis, which is important. If you didn’t want to see her happy you’d immediately be turned off by all the trouble the rest of the cast are put through for her. Ford is great, Lange is gorgeous and funny, Ann-Margret was such a stunner back then. She must have been 19 or 20 when she filmed this and radiates an innocent sensuality. She’s kind, not the sex goddess she would soon become… not yet.
But the MVP of the movie is Peter Falk as Ford’s right-hand man, Joy Boy. He’s the reason I stayed with the movie. He plays the character with a little amused bewildered cynicism. He’s a smart ass and is the perfect comedy relief, playing the audience’s mouthpiece. Falk continually comments on the ridiculousness of the whole situation and gives some winning lines, including the one I picked for the quote in the headline. And a bit of trivia: Falk was nominated for his role, best supporting actor. He lost out to George Chakiris for WEST SIDE STORY.
So, it’s a good movie with a lot of great characters, but it’s not one that really connected with me. I stayed with it, was engaged whenever Peter Falk was onscreen and enjoyed everybody else, but there was just a distance I felt from the material. It could be I’m a little worn out and this was the third movie of the day for me and I just couldn’t concentrate on it. That’s definitely a possibility I will extend to the film. Whatever the reason, I liked it enough, but it just didn’t blow my socks off.
Final Thoughts: Frank Capra’s sentimentality is on full display here, giving us a ton of likable characters. Even the skeazy people are likable… hell, some of the skeazy people are the MOST likable people in the movie. Perhaps if I had approached with a fresher mindset I’d be a lot more into the movie, but as it stands now it’s a movie I appreciate and enjoy, just on a disconnected level. But the movie has a midget in it, so it’s automatically better than average.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Saturday, December 6th: MIKEY & NICKY (1976)
Sunday, December 7th: TWO MINUTE WARNING (1976)
Monday, December 8th: THE SENTINEL (1976)
Tuesday, December 9th: HOW TO STEAL A MILLION (1966)
Wednesday, December 10th: WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? (1965)
Thursday, December 11th: BEING THERE (1979)
Friday, December 12th: THE PARTY (1968)
Tomorrow we hit a ‘70s film teaming Peter Falk with John Cassavetes called MIKEY & NICKY! See you folks for that one!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
