Lady

In Manhattan, once every week, to a grubby little room on Eighth Avenue went a check from the city relief bureau. The old couple who lived there were always waiting. First thing they did when the check arrived was to buy a bottle of gin. Then they sat on the stairs, guzzled gin, laughed and howled and slapped each other on the back. Last fortnight, after one of their bouts, the tipsy husband tried to light the gas heater. While he fumbled with the matches, gas flooded the room, brought Death to the old couple.

Six days their bodies lay unclaimed in the City Morgue before a detective thought to trace the black lace evening gown which he found in the crone's drawer. Then Broadway knew that "Apple Annie" was dead. Her real name was Helen McCarthy. But for five years, known only as Apple Annie, she stood in a little alley off Times Square, hawked apples & oranges & gum. There Sportswriter Damon Runyon passed her many a day and on one of them he had an idea. The idea became a story, Apple Annie. The story became a moving picture, Lady For A Day, a film of a bottle-loving harridan who played for 24 hours the part of a Park Avenue dowager (TIME, Sept. 18, 1933). Before the cinema opened last autumn, Apple Annie inspired a second idea, this time in the minds of Columbia Pictures' pressagents. They would make Apple Annie herself a lady for a day.

On the stroke of midnight a sleek black limousine rolled up to Annie's alley. Annie and her apples were whisked across town to the Waldorf-Astoria, escorted to a three-room suite. As a tip the bellboy received an apple. The bed was too soft, the nightgown too silky, the gold & rose furnishings too frightening to permit sleep. Annie paced the deep plush carpet. Next morning she climbed into bed for breakfast. The pressagents took her to a Fifth Avenue smartshop. Shrewdly she chose two black gowns, both very simple, very tasteful, very expensive. After lunch, to her great delight, a police escort cleared the way to City Hall. Bumbling Mayor O'Brien was out. Said Annie: 'I ain't going to wait. I'm just as Irish as he is." She had tea with caviar in a swank restaurant, dined with Showman Samuel L. ("Roxy'') Rothafel, saw a preview of Lady For A Day. Taken to a farewell supper, she waltzed, drank, acted as if her Day were to last forever. At midnight Apple Annie vanished from the ball. The pressagents gave her $25 and the clothes she wore, dropped her at her dingy flat.

Most of the clothes Annie gave to a friend in distress. A fur scarf she traded for whiskey. In six months, turning 71, she gave up her apple stand. In eight more she was dead.

Last week, with some sentiment and more sense of what makes news, Columbia Pictures gave Apple Annie one more Day. Annie was dressed in ruffled satin, her husband in his first dinner coat. In luxury they were buried.

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