IMDb RATING
6.7/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
A woman pretends to be royalty in order to get aboard a cruise ship.A woman pretends to be royalty in order to get aboard a cruise ship.A woman pretends to be royalty in order to get aboard a cruise ship.
Monya Andre
- Undetermined Role
- (uncredited)
Benny Bartlett
- Ship's Bellhop
- (uncredited)
Virginia Cabell
- Undetermined Role
- (uncredited)
George Chandler
- Film Man
- (uncredited)
David Clyde
- Assistant Purser
- (uncredited)
Keith Daniels
- Reporter
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe working title of The Princess Comes Across (1936) was "Concertina."
- GoofsIt's possible that Fred MacMurray can play the concertina, but when he is singing and playing, his fingers do not move. Also, he moves the bellows in and out when there is no concertina music.
- Quotes
Lady Gertrude Allwyn: The story is from a novel entitled Lavender and Old Lace, but the name of the cinema has been changed to... um... She Done Him Plenty.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Gable and Lombard (1976)
- SoundtracksMy Concertina
(1936) (uncredited)
Music by Phil Boutelje
Lyrics by Jack Scholl
Played during the opening and end credits
Played on a concertina and sung by Fred MacMurray at the concert
Featured review
Diverse elements don't quite jell
'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.
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.
Helpful•2111
- Igenlode Wordsmith
- Jul 28, 2005
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 16 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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By what name was The Princess Comes Across (1936) officially released in India in English?
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