Pocketful of Miracles
Pocketful of Miracles is a 1961 American comedy film starring Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, produced and directed by Frank Capra, filmed in Panavision. The screenplay by Hal Kanter and Harry Tugend was based on Robert Riskin's screenplay for the 1933 film Lady for a Day, which was adapted from the 1929 Damon Runyon short story "Madame La Gimp". That original 1933 film was also directed by Capra—one of two films that he originally directed and later remade, the other being Broadway Bill (1934) and its remake Riding High (1950).
For the album by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, see A Pocket Full of Miracles.Pocketful of Miracles
- Hal Kanter
- Harry Tugend
Frank Capra
Robert J. Bronner
- December 19, 1961
137 minutes
United States
English
$2.9 million
$5 million ($51 million in 2023 dollars)
$2.5 million (US/Canada)[1]
The film was the final project for both Capra and Thomas Mitchell. It marked Ann-Margret's film debut.
Peter Falk was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot[edit]
"Dave the Dude", a very successful New York City gangster, has one superstition: he believes that the apples he buys from alcoholic street peddler Apple Annie bring him luck. Annie assures the Dude that his latest purchase is especially lucky. He then meets Elizabeth "Queenie" Martin, the daughter of a friend and speakeasy owner recently murdered for owing a lot of money to the wrong people. Queenie offers to pay him $5 a week from her cashier's salary toward the $20,000 owed him. Instead, trusting Annie's claim, he decides to make Queenie a nightclub star. To the astonishment of his right-hand man, "Joy Boy", he succeeds, and Queenie is able to pay off all her father's creditors after two years, just as Prohibition ends.
Dave has an important meeting with a very powerful underworld boss from Chicago, Steve Darcey, aka "Mr. Big". Darcey is debating whether to allow Dave to control the New York territory in exchange for $50,000 "as a token of good faith." Dave counters by demanding $100,000 "as a token of your good faith."
Meanwhile, Annie has an illegitimate daughter named Louise, whom she sent to Europe as a baby. In her letters to Louise, she masquerades as wealthy socialite Mrs. E. Worthington Manville, sending Louise money she gets from the Dude and various "godparents" (her fellow beggars and panhandlers). Louise, now grown up, is bringing her Spanish fiancé Carlos and his father, Count Alfonso Romero, to meet her. Annie has been pretending she resides in a luxurious hotel (writing her letters on stolen hotel stationery) and has Louise's letters mailed there intercepted 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, and arranges for cultured pool hustler "Judge" Henry G. Blake to pose as Annie's husband.
When Dave 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.
Reception[edit]
Motion Picture Herald covered the preview and gave the film good marks, with the review headline "Pocketful of Dollars" predicting an excellent box office performance. Boxoffice confirmed that the film "ranked in the top hit class by exhibitors in the 20 key cities across the nation."[6] The critic for The Hollywood Reporter also looked upon the film favorably, calling it "a Christmas sockful of joy, funny, sentimental, romantic [and] frankly capricious."[2]
Other reviewers were more guarded. In The New York Times, A.H. Weiler noted: "Mr. Capra and his energetic troupe manage to get a fair share of laughs from Mr. Runyon's oddball guys and dolls, but their lampoon is dated and sometimes uneven and listless...Repetition and a world faced by grimmer problems seem to have been excessively tough competition for this plot."[2] Variety thought the plot "alternates uneasily between wit and sentiment" and added "The picture seems too long, considering that there's never any doubt as to the outcome, and it's also too lethargic, but there are sporadic compensations of line and situation that reward the patience. Fortunately Capra has assembled some of Hollywood's outstanding character players for the chore...The best lines in the picture go to Peter Falk...[who] just about walks off with the film when he's on."[7] Veteran publisher Pete Harrison classed the film as only "fair," citing the Bette Davis approach to the May Robson portrayal: "The old Robson touch of wistful poignancy to the role is missing. Miss Davis' sharp, clipped, almost cold delivery gives you the feeling that any minute she'll be calling out to 'Petah.' She fails to beget your sympathy. For all the individual brilliance shown by [the supporting players], this doesn't quite reach its big picture objective. To be sure, it doesn't fail by much."[8] Least impressed was Elaine Rothschild of Films in Review: "This unbelievable and unfunny comedy proves only that director Frank Capra has learned nothing and forgotten nothing in the 28 years that intervened between the two pictures. Pocketful of Miracles is not merely out of whole cloth, but out of date, and watching it is a painful experience."[2] Filmink argued Ann Margret "is sweet in a small but important part, one of the best things about the movie; she certainly made more of an impact than the bloke who plays her fiancee, another 'discovery' Peter Mann."[9]
Exhibitors protested Bette Davis's star billing as they worried it would hurt the box office, and the receipts did fall short of expectations.[10]
Home media[edit]
MGM Home Entertainment released the film on VHS in 1997 followed by the Region 1 DVD on September 18, 2001. It is in non-anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks in English and Spanish and subtitles in Spanish and French. It received a US Region A Blu-ray release on November 18, 2014 from Kino Lorber.
Remakes[edit]
The film was remade in Persian as Gedayan Tehran (1967), Turkish as Elmacı Kadın (1971). Pocketful of Miracles is the basis for the 1989 Hong Kong film Miracles starring Jackie Chan and Anita Mui, which later was remade as the 2008 Hindi-language Indian film Singh Is Kinng, starring Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif.