The Princess Comes Across

I didn't have time for a long movie last night, so I popped in one of the DVDs from the Carole Lombard collection I bought some time back and watched The Princess Runs Across with its brief running time of just under 77 minutes.

The princess, such as she is, as Princess Olga of Sweden (Carole Lombard, doing a Garbo impersonation), traveling with her lady-in-waiting Gertrude (Alison Skipworth). They're boarding a ship to America, as Olga has signed a contract to become an actress in Hollywood films. Also boarding is King Martell (Fred MacMurray), a concertina player traveling with his manager Benton (William Frawley). He was accidentally given Olga's stateroom, but he gives it up because he's obviously smitten with her and wants to keep her happy so that she'll fall in love with him.

Another person who is on the ship is Darcy (Porter Hall). He's a blackmail artist, and he has information on both Martell and Olga. What he knows about Olga is that she's really not Olga, but a Brooklyn-born chorus girl named Wanda, who has obviously come up with a fake identity to become the latest European discovery. (You'd think the Swedish government would hve noticed that somebody was claiming to be a fake Swedish princess, but that never happens.) Darcy also knows about one of Martell's indiscretions, and tells Martell that he also has information on a third passenger. Perhaps it's the alleged murderer who was on the passenger manifest but may or may not have boarded.

If people aren't willing to pay Darcy, he's in luck in that there are a bunch of detectives from various countries on board going to an international conference in America. Darcy goes to one of those to reveal his information, but soon after that, we find Darcy's body in Olga's stateroom. Martell takes the body back to Darcy's own cabin, and when the body is eventually found, the detectives set about trying to solve the murder mystery. Martell does too, if only to save his own hide.

I went into The Princess Comes Across expecting a light comedy, and that's not what you get here. It's a lot lighter than a standard mystery, but the comedy isn't quite as glaring as in something like The Thin Man and all the imitators that followed it. In that regard it's an odd mish-mash at times, but it all comes together reasonably well in the end. There's nothing wrong with the movie, but at the same time Lombard and MacMurray will both be remembered more for other things they did. It you want entertainment that's not particularly challenging, The Princess Comes Across is certainly not a bad place to look.