for her by an employee. However, the employee is fired when this is found out. Dave's girlfriend Queenie insists he help Annie continue her charade. Dave reluctantly goes along, worried that his luck would run out otherwise. Queenie has the bedraggled Annie made up to look like a sophisticated socialite, while Dave borrows an out-of-town friend's luxurious penthouse suite, complete with Hudgins the butler (Edward Everett Horton) - and arranges for cultured pool hustler "Judge" Henry G. Blake (Thomas Mitchell) to pose as Annie's husband. When the Dude keeps postponing finalizing the deal with Mr. Big to help Annie, Joy Boy becomes increasingly exasperated and frightened. Dave manages to engineer a lavish reception, with New York's mayor and governor as guests, the night before Louise and her impressed future husband and father-in-law sail back to Europe, none the wiser about her mother's real identity. Mr. Big agrees to the Dude's terms, but the Dude decides to marry Queenie and settle down. Cast Production Frank Capra had directed Lady for a Day in 1933 and for years had wanted to film a remake, but executives at Columbia Pictures, which owned the screen rights, felt the original story was too old-fashioned. In the mid-1950s, when Hal Wallis offered to buy it as a Paramount Pictures vehicle for Shirley Booth, Columbia head Harry Cohn decided to offer it to Capra instead, hoping he could lure Booth to his studio. Unable to persuade either Abe Burrows or Garson Kanin to update the plot, Capra began working on the screenplay himself. His modern version, which involved Korean War orphans and an apple farm in Oregon, was filled with Cold War rhetoric and retitled Ride the Pink Cloud. Cohn insisted Capra find a collaborator, but he thought the draft submitted by Harry Tugend was no better, and he dropped the project. In 1960, Capra bought the screen rights from Columbia for $225,000, and the director made a deal with United Artists, where it was decided to film the story as a period piece set in the 1930s. Capra originally cast Frank Sinatra as Dave the Dude, but the actor walked out due to disagreements about the script. Kirk Douglas, Dean Martin, and Jackie Gleason rejected the role. Then Glenn Ford approached Capra with an offer to help finance the film through his production company if he was cast as the lead. The director felt Ford was