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Apple Annie's best friend, a gambler named Dave the Dude (Warren William) who considers it good luck to buy her wares, decides to help her out. He has her renovated by beauticians, installed in a handsome apartment, rigged in the costume of a respectable dowager. To make the arrangement even more convincing, he has his underlings pose as members of Manhattan's haute monde which they do successfully until one of them, a garrulous old billiard-shark (Guy Kibbee), proposes a reception for Count Romero. Dave the Dude arranges for the waiters and chorus girls of Missouri Martin's cafe to appear as socialites but the police interfere because, in his anxiety to make the affair a success, Dave the Dude has kidnapped three society reporters. To persuade the police to permit the festivities, Dave the Dude calls on the Commissioner, who takes him to see the Mayor, who is having dinner with the Governor. Instead of Missouri Martin's waiters and chorus girls, it turns out that the Governor, the Mayor and all their friends attend Apple Annie's reception, just in time to prevent Count Romero and the daughter from finding out that she is a fraud. Director Frank Capra's light touch as much as Damon Runyon's story makes the picture the more likable for being entirely implausible. Good shot: two glum expressionless faces on either side of Apple Annie's wildly excited one in the crowd at the pier when she meets her daughter's boat. If, as is highly probable, Lady for a Day is a box office success, May Robson will soon be one of the small company of actresses who have become Hollywood stars not because they are handsome but because, in a.lifetime of practice, they have learned how to act. At 68 she is six years older than Marie Dressier, ten years older than Alison Skipworth, eight years older than the late Louise Closser Hale. Stock companies are the best schools for actors. May Robson played in stock for 40 years as well as starring intermittently in Manhattan, London and elsewhere. Says she: "Close your eyes, put your finger on a map and nine chances out of ten I've played there." For the last ten years or so she has been an expert bit-part actress in the cinema. Peculiarly blind to the most obvious qualities in their story, the producers of Lady for a Day were under the impression that her part in it was a bit also, until the reactions of a preview audience made it clear that she was the most important member of the cast. After celebrating the 50th anniversary of her stage career at a Hollywood party last fortnight, May Robson went to Manhattan for the premiere of Lady for a Day, received a wrist watch from Columbia's grateful Vice President Jack Cohn, hurried back to Hollywood to start work on a new picture. She has a five-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM will make a fat profit on Actress Robson for lending her services to Columbia. In her next picture she will replace Marie Dressier as a teammate for Polly Moran. Like most old time actresses, May Robson is light-hearted as well as competent. She takes tapestry pillow covers to the studio to work on when she is not acting, writes a daily letter to her son, a Manhattan stock broker, goes to the races at Agua Caliente as often as she can. Bureau of Missing Persons (First National). To advertise the premiere of Lady for a Day (see above), Columbia's publicity department last week hired