The Princess Comes Across

The plot of this movie seems rather crazy. After all, Carole Lombard plays an American who can't get a job in Hollywood, so she pretends to be a Swedish princess (sort of like a royal version of Garbo) and is adored--and offered a film contract. Now you'd think this is a totally ridiculous idea, but in real life just a year later, Samuel Goldwyn introduced a Norwegian sensation--Sigrid Gurie. Unfortunately, when it was found out that Gurie was born in Brooklyn (exactly like Lombard's character), it didn't exactly help her film career! Now you'd think that having Lombard playing a rather broad Garbo impersonation would be silly, but because she was such a likable actress and it's such a cute film, they manage to carry it off well.

The film begins with Lombard coming aboard an ocean liner with a lot of hubbub from the press--after all, they think a princess is on her way to America. Once aboard, band leader Fred MacMurray falls for her and pursues her. However, unexpectedly, the comedy becomes a murder mystery--and both MacMurray and Lombard are suspects. However, MacMurray also knows that she was the victim of a blackmailer who was just murdered--and he knows she has something to hide. There's much more to the film than this, but you can just see it yourself--it's worth it.

Overall, the film works well because the writing is very good and the actors have nice supporting character actors on hand--such as William Frawley, Douglas Dumbrille and Sig Ruman. Plus, the ever slimy Porter Hall made for a great blackmailer. Clever and most enjoyable from start to finish.

Oh, and I must point out that this film allows the viewer to hear MacMurray Crooning! His voice, though a tad weak, was actually far better than I expected and was rather reminiscent of the singing of Dick Powell.

THE PRINCESS COMES ALONG is a comedy/mystery that unfortunately splits itself in the middle rather than being a mix of both genres throughout the film. It stars Carole Lombard as a girl from Brooklyn who while in England somehow manages to persuade film producers that she is a Princess Olga of Sweden, is signed to a contract and on her way to America to make movies. The movie opens with the excited passengers and press eager to see the Princess board the ship (just how this ruse is successfully pulled off strains credibility, Sweden, after all is a major nation, and surely any allegations that a Princess was going to enter pictures would have quickly been denied and disproved).

Fred MacMurray is a popular bandleader who is also on board and takes a shine to the Princess, attempting to romance her. She is indifferent but when a blackmailer is found dead in her room she becomes warmer to MacMurray's offer of friendship as he and buddy William Frawley remove the body. That still means a murder is loose on board and there's more mayhem in the works before the killer is revealed.

This movie starts out an engaging 1930's romantic comedy with Lombard deliciously parodying Garbo as the faux Royal Highness. Alas, the movie literally turns deadly after the murder and it's pretty much a straightforward murder mystery with a surprise that isn't much of a surprise if you've seen movies of this nature. Nevertheless, the cast does very well with the material, particularly the young Fred MacMurray, quite dashing in his late twenties, and the delicious character actress Alison Skipworth, here cast as the Princess' haughty traveling companion but in truth another unemployed actress and of course the always great Lombard. Months after their triumph in MY MAN GODFREY, Lombard is reunited with Mischa Auer with the latter in a small role as the Russian detective, one of several international detectives who just so happen to be all traveling on board. THE PRINCESS COMES ALONG is not one of the better Lombard films but it's a pleasant 90 minutes and worth at least one viewing.

Combining the elements of a great screwball comedy with a murder mystery,Paramount again cast the great team of Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray.Carole a down-on-her-luck publicity hungry actress enlists the aid of wise-cracking hefty Alison Skipworth and together they sail aboard a luxury liner en route to America.Lombard pretending to a Swedish princess befriends Fred MacMurray and pal William Frawley and all four form an uneasy alliance.Matters become complicated when Carole is suspected of murdering a blackmailer who knew her in Brooklyn.A pack of zany international detectives attempt to solve the crime in their bumbling fashion while MacMurray tries to find the murderer before he strikes again. This fine little comedy is ably directed William K. Howard with a wonderful supporting cast led by George Barbier(ship captain) suspects Porter Hall,Douglas Dumbrille,and egocentric detectives Sig Rumann,Mischa Auer,and Tetsu Komai.Surefire fun.

The main reason to see this fun, if slowly paced, comedy-mystery is to see a glowing Carole Lombard do an hilarious impersonation of Greta Garbo. She plays an American actress pretending to be a Swedish princess - and Carole has a ball sending up Garbo in the process. Also great to get a glimpse of pre-WW2 politics, with the detectives on board coming from all over the globe - including Germany, Russia and Japan. Great fun. What a shame we don't all travel by boat still!

'The Princess Comes Across' was billed as 'a curious blend of comedy, murder-mystery, romance and music'; the 'curious' is certainly without question, but the degree to which the mix blends is, I feel, open to some doubt.

On the whole this is mainly satisfactory from the comedy angle. The sole musical element consists of casting our hero, played by Fred McMurray, as a concertina-player, a choice of instrument guaranteed to provide humour by its plebeian contrast to royalty. McMurray also sings a spoof ode to his concertina at the obligatory onboard musical evening that gathers all the murder suspects together -- save one! -- to stage the climax to the mystery plot. Unfortunately the solution to the latter turns out to be extremely lame, the plot line having been again almost totally subjugated to the need for laughs, and chiefly providing an excuse for the introduction of four stereotyped comedy detectives -- the dapper Frenchman, the pompous Prussian, the pipe-smoking Englishman and the devious Russian -- and an opportunity to implicate Carole Lombard's Swedish princess.

Lombard's haughty impression of the princess who just wants to be left alone is the main selling-point of the film, and the difficulties this role places in the way of romance with her cocky concertina artiste, 'King' Mantell, provide most of the rest of the comedy. Filmed through a gauzy lens, she has perhaps never been more beautiful, and the script handles her predicament with sympathy, but this one gimmick isn't quite enough in the end to carry off the rest of this mish-mash of a film.

Ultimately I felt that it strains at too many different goals and falls short of most of them: its worst actual defect is the hand-waving denouement to the detective plot, which is of a nature to embarrass Agatha Christie at her most contrived, but the climax to the romance also somehow struck me as arbitrary and unsatisfactory, given how hard her character has defended her increasingly impossible situation throughout the rest of the film. Again, I get the feeling that the plot demands of the comic and romantic set-up respectively are pulling in conflicting directions rather than forming a happy blend.

Not a long-lost classic, but a curiosity, perhaps; worth seeing for Lombard's title performance, but ultimately less than a harmonious whole.