Thirty Day Princess [30-Day Princess] *** (1934, Sylvia Sidney, Cary Grant, Edward Arnold) – Classic Movie Review 7352

Director Marion Gering’s contrived but appealing and amusing 1934 Paramount Pictures black and white comedy Thirty Day Princess reunites the stars of 1932’s Madame Butterfly, Sylvia Sidney and Cary Grant.

Thirty Day Princess is a gently comic tale of a European royal called Princess Catterina (Sidney), who arrives in New York City to secure a loan for her country but contracts the mumps and needs to find a double in New York to cover for her while she recovers from the illness, alighting on an exact lookalike, a resting actress named plain Nancy Lane (also Sidney), who needs the work.

Four writers adapt the story by Clarence Buddington Kelland for the screen – Sam Hellman, Edwin Justus Mayer, Preston Sturges and Frank Partos.

But the normally reliable scriptwriter Preston Sturges fails to come up with the top-quality goods this time in a fairly daft story/ screenplay that is only fitfully funny. However, the top cast horse around playfully enough, with Sidney excellent in her dual role, Edward Arnold fine as a Manhattan banker called Richard Gresham and Grant in particularly charming form as a newspaper publisher, Porter Madison III, who falls for Nancy Lane, believing her to be the princess, upsetting her regal boyfriend, Count Nicholaus (Vince Barnett).

It is not quite classic Cary Grant but it is amusing and worth checking out.

Also in the cast are Henry Stephenson as King Anatol XII, Edgar Norton, Ray Walker, Lucien Littlfield, Robert McWade, George Baxter, Edgar Dearing, Dick Rush, Bruce Warren, Marguerite Namara and William Arnold.

It is one of the five discs on the Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection [DVD] [2006] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC], along with Kiss and Make-Up (1934), Wings in the Dark (1935), Big Brown Eyes (1936) and Wedding Present (1936).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7352

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