Penny Princess (1952)

Best movie ever!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In this haphazard Technicolor fantasy, a ditzy but dauntless young American woman becomes the heir to the throne of a tiny, insolvent European country named Lampidorra. The bumbling representative of a British cheese company convinces her that the answer to Lampidorra's problem lies in its principal product: schneese, which is cheese crossbred with schnapps. "Penny Princess" is essentially an operetta without the singing. It's all very silly, the satire is heavy-handed, and the leading lady is a bit of a pill, but it's a harmless way to spend an hour and a half. Val Guest, who wrote and directed the film, would go on to better things, particularly in the field of science fiction. He also married the leading lady.

Yolande Donlan is a "Penny Princess" in this 1952 British musical also starring Dirk Bogarde. It's a cute premise - an American shopgirl, Lindy Smith, ends up inheriting a tiny country, Lampidorra, which has kept itself going by smuggling. Facing bankruptcy, part of the country is purchased by the Lindy's distant relative, who dies before forking over any cash. Lindy is brought over and given the royal welcome. She forbids smuggling, and the country begins to import schneese, a special kind of cheese they have taken for granted.The movie is just okay, but quite good in the beginning, dragging a bit thereafter. "It's a Fine, Fine Night," one of the songs, apparently was released as a single, though the music throughout is just serviceable.The American Donlan is attractive and likable, a cross between Judy Holliday and Janet Leigh. In fact, she was a big hit on the British stage in Holliday's Broadway role of Billie Dawn in "Born Yesterday." After that, she stayed on in England, and two years after this film, she married its writer/director, Val Guest, to whom she was married until his death in 2006. She's now 89 years old. She appears in Guest's 1963 film "80,000 Suspects" and is not recognizable in looks or acting as the same woman. She obviously had a lot of talent and a wide range.It's hard to imagine anyone less suited to comedy than Dirk Bogarde, even young Dirk Bogarde, unless it's Montgomery Clift, but this role went to Bogarde after both Clift and Cary Grant refused it! He plays a cheese vendor who becomes involved with both the princess and the product schneese. And he's very cute.The film was done on location in Spain. It's not very good, but Clift looks great in pajamas. And it's in color.

Cute idea... salesgirl Linda Smith (Yolande Donlan) inherits a teeny tiny little county of Lampidorra. That country, which wasn't even in North America, was made the 49th state... (of course, there were only 48 states at the time, since this was made in 1952...) Linda travels to the country she has inherited, and we follow her along as she tries to figure out what to do with this strange country and its even quirkier people. At one point, she sings a song that she claims is from her people the Navajo, and it gets ever-more sillier from there.... although Yolande Donlan's heavy lipstick and omni-present smile never get ruffled or shmeared. There are other songs scattered through-out as the citizens sing to welcome their new princess. Filmed in a glorious British version of technicolor, or some such equivalent, about the only big name here is Dirk Bogarde as British subject Tony Craig, cheese vendor. Bogarde made a big splash in the UK film industry after serving in the war, and was even knighted by QE II. Craig and "the new princess" keep bumping into each other, and their adventures become more intertwined as Lampidorra's financial problems worsen... Fun little farce....along the lines of Marx Brothers film. Also note that Donlan later married Val Guest, the writer and director of our little project, and stayed married for 50 years! Guest was better known for writing and directing his sci-fi flicks, in both the UK & the US.

I am very sorry that this charming and whimsical film (which I first saw soon after it was first released in the early fifties) has had such a poor reception more recently. In my opinion it has been greatly underrated - but perhaps it appeals more to the European sense of humour than to (for example) the American: maybe we in Europe can understand and appreciate its subtleties and situations more, since we are closer to some of them in real life! Particular mention should be made of the limited but good music - especially the catchy and memorable song "It's a fine, fine night", which was issued separately on an HMV 78rpm record (10 inch plum label, I think!) in the fifties. I would urge anyone interested to give it a try if you get the chance: you may have a pleasant surprise.