The Princess Comes Across | |
---|---|
Directed by | William K. Howard |
Screenplay by | Walter DeLeon Francis Martin Don Hartman Frank Butler [1] Claude Binyon (uncredited) J. B. Priestley (uncredited) |
Story by | Philip MacDonald (adaptation) |
Based on | A Halálkabin ("Death Cab") (1934 novel) by Louis Lucien Rogger (Laszlo Aigner and Louis Acze) |
Produced by | Arthur Hornblow Jr. |
Starring | Carole Lombard Fred MacMurray |
Cinematography | Ted Tetzlaff |
Edited by | Paul Weatherwax |
Music by | Song "My Concertina": Phil Boutelje Jack Scholl |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 75-76 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Princess Comes Across is a 1936 American mystery comedy film directed by William K. Howard and starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, the second of the four times they were paired together. Lombard, playing an actress from Brooklyn pretending to be a Swedish princess, does a "film-length takeoff" on MGM's Swedish star Greta Garbo. [2] The film was based on the 1935 novel A Halálkabin by Louis Lucien Rogger, the pseudonym of Laszlo Aigner and Louis Acze.
Wanda Nash (Carole Lombard), an actress from Brooklyn, decides to masquerade as "Princess Olga" from Sweden in order to land a film contract with a big Hollywood studio. On board the liner Mammoth bound for New York, she runs into King Mantell (Fred MacMurray), a concertina-playing band leader with a criminal record in his past. Both are blackmailed by Robert M. Darcy (Porter Hall), and after Darcy is killed, they become two of the prime suspects for the murder, and must find the real killer before the five police detectives traveling on the ship can pin it on them.
The Princess Comes Across– which began with the working title Concertina [3] – was initially intended to pair Lombard with George Raft for the third time, but Raft walked out when the studio assigned Ted Tetzlaff to photograph the film. [4] Raft felt that Tetzlaff had made Lombard look better than himself in their earlier film, Rumba , and did not want it to happen again. [5] [6] It was one of many roles Raft rejected after becoming a star. [7]
With Raft out of the picture, and temporarily suspended for his actions, [3] the studio re-teamed Lombard and MacMurray, who had made the screwball comedy Hands Across the Table together in 1935. They would be paired together twice more, in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and True Confession , made in the same year. [5]
Aside from casting concerns, filming was also delayed by the need for additional dialogue, which caused a change of directors from Harold Young to William K. Howard, and, after filming had begun in February 1936, by conflict between Howard and the producer's assistant.[ citation needed ]
Both the film and the stars received good notices. Variety called her Garbo impersonation a "swell characterization and makes a highly diverting [comedy] contrast when the 'princess' lapses into her real self and unloads a line of Brooklynese." Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune praised Lombard's " assured and restrained portrayal – [which] is resourceful in exploiting its comic possibilities" The New York Post 's Thornton Delehanty called her Princess the " first role in which we have admired her since the early days of her picture career." Lombard herself liked the film because it "allowed her to do what she had first practiced in childhood days back in Indiana – mimic a figure from the silver screen." [2] However, Frank S. Nugent in his New York Times review called the film a "mild-to-boresome comedy." [5]
The Lux Radio Theater presented a one-hour radio adaptation of the film in December 1938, with Fred MacMurray repeating his role and Madeleine Carroll playing Wanda Nash/Princess Olga. [5]
Carole Lombard was an American actress, particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in screwball comedies. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard 23rd on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Frederick Martin MacMurray was an American actor. He appeared in more than one hundred films and a successful television series in a career that spanned nearly a half-century. His career as a major film leading man began in 1935, but his most renowned role was in Billy Wilder's film noir Double Indemnity. During 1959–1973, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Happiest Millionaire. He starred as Steve Douglas in the television series My Three Sons.
Twentieth Century is a 1934 American pre-Code screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard. Much of the film is set on the 20th Century Limited train as it travels from Chicago to New York City. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur adapted their 1932 Broadway play of the same name – itself based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles Bruce Millholland – with uncredited contributions from Gene Fowler and Preston Sturges.
Dorothy Lamour was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
George Raft was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s. A stylish leading man in dozens of movies, Raft is remembered for his gangster roles in Quick Millions (1931) with Spencer Tracy, Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni, Each Dawn I Die (1939) with James Cagney, Invisible Stripes (1939) with Humphrey Bogart, and Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon; and as a dancer in Bolero (1934) with Carole Lombard and a truck driver in They Drive by Night (1940) with Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino and Bogart.
Hands Across the Table is a 1935 American romantic screwball comedy film directed by Mitchell Leisen and released by Paramount Pictures. It stars Carole Lombard as a manicurist looking for a rich husband and Fred MacMurray as a poor playboy, with Ralph Bellamy as a wealthy ex-pilot in a wheelchair. The teaming of Lombard and MacMurray was so well received, they went on to make three more films together, The Princess Comes Across (1936), Swing High, Swing Low (1937), and True Confession (1937).
Follow the Boys also known as Three Cheers for the Boys is a 1944 musical film made by Universal Pictures during World War II as an all-star cast morale booster to entertain the troops abroad and the civilians at home. The film was directed by A. Edward "Eddie" Sutherland and produced by Charles K. Feldman. The movie stars George Raft and Vera Zorina and features Grace McDonald, Charles Grapewin, Regis Toomey and George Macready. At one point in the film, Orson Welles saws Marlene Dietrich in half during a magic show. W.C. Fields, in his first movie since 1941, performs a classic pool-playing presentation he first developed in vaudeville four decades earlier in 1903.
Dale H. "Ted" Tetzlaff was an Academy Award-nominated Hollywood cinematographer active in the 1930s and 1940s.
You and Me is a 1938 American crime film noir directed by Fritz Lang and starring Sylvia Sidney and George Raft. They play a pair of criminals on parole and working in a department store full of similar cases; Harry Carey's character routinely hires ex-convicts to staff his store. The film was written by Norman Krasna and Virginia Van Upp.
Rumba is a 1935 American musical drama film starring George Raft as a Cuban dancer and Carole Lombard as a Manhattan socialite. The movie was directed by Marion Gering and is considered an unsuccessful follow-up to Raft and Lombard's smash hit Bolero the previous year.
No Man of Her Own is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy-drama film starring Clark Gable and Carole Lombard as a married couple in their only film together, several years before their own legendary marriage in real life. The film was directed by Wesley Ruggles, and originated as an adaptation of No Bed of Her Own, a 1931 novel by Val Lewton, but ended up based more on a story by Benjamin Glazer and Edmund Goulding, although it retained the title from Lewton's novel. It is not related to the 1950 film of the same name.
Albert E. Lewis was a Polish-born Broadway and film producer. His family emigrated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York when he was a boy. He became a vaudeville comedian, then started a partnership producing one-act plays for vaudeville. Around 1930 he moved to Hollywood and worked as a film producer with Paramount, RKO, and MGM until after World War II.
True Confession is a 1937 American screwball comedy film directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, and John Barrymore. It was based on the 1934 play Mon Crime, written by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil. In 1946 it was remade as Cross My Heart.
Fools for Scandal is a 1938 screwball comedy film starring Carole Lombard and Fernand Gravet, featuring Ralph Bellamy, Allen Jenkins, Isabel Jeans, Marie Wilson and Marcia Ralston, and produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. It was written by Herbert Fields and Joseph Fields with additional dialogue by Irving Brecher, and uncredited contributions by others based on the unproduced 1936 play Return Engagement by Nancy Hamilton, James Shute and Rosemary Casey. The songs are by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
Love Before Breakfast is a 1936 American romantic comedy film starring Carole Lombard, Preston Foster, and Cesar Romero, based on Faith Baldwin's short story Spinster Dinner, published in International-Cosmopolitan in July 1934. The film was directed by Walter Lang from a screenplay by Herbert Fields assisted by numerous contract writers, including Preston Sturges.
Fast and Loose is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and starring Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard and Frank Morgan. The film was written by Doris Anderson, Jack Kirkland and Preston Sturges, based on the 1924 play The Best People by David Gray and Avery Hopwood. Fast and Loose was released by Paramount Pictures.
The Women is a 1939 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor. The film is based on Clare Boothe Luce's 1936 play of the same name, and was adapted for the screen by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, who had to make the film acceptable for the Production Code for it to be released.
Swing High, Swing Low is a 1937 American romantic comedy drama film directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray.
Hollywood Without Make-Up is a 1963 American film produced by Ken Murray and directed by Rudy Behlmer, Loring d'Usseau and Ken Murray (uncredited).
Captain Eddie is a 1945 American drama film directed by Lloyd Bacon, based on Seven Were Saved by "Eddie" Rickenbacker and Lt. James Whittaker's We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing. The film stars Fred MacMurray, Lynn Bari and Charles Bickford. Captain Eddie is a "biopic" of Rickenbacker, from his experiences as a flying ace during World War I to his later involvement as a pioneering figure in civil aviation, and his iconic status as a business leader who was often at odds with labour unions and the government.
Notes