Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Arianna Moses 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.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

SimonJack Two buddies are making their last runs as commercial pilots before going into the Army Air Corps in this 1943 comedy romance. Robert Cummings plays Eddie O'Rourke and Jack Carson plays Dave Campbell. But Eddie's future is drastically altered when a woman passenger, Mary Williams, boards their plane heading for California. She is Princess Maria (from some undisclosed European country) who is traveling incognito. Olivia de Havilland plays Maria/Mary who happily takes sleeping pills from several people to be able to sleep on her flight from New York.But bad weather at all points ahead soon forces the plane to return to New York. Only her royal guardian, Maria's uncle Holman, doesn't know about this until later. Charles Coburn plays Holman with his usual wit and frequently dry humor. Eddie takes charge of the sleepy drugged Mary and tries to locate her family, to no avail. Finally, he calls Dave and his wife, Jean (played by Jane Wyman), who go to his apartment where Jean puts Mary to bed.From there the fun continues as Uncle Holman is joined by the U.S. State Department and police in trying to locate the missing princess. They think she has been kidnapped.This is a light, fun film with a very far-fetched plot (the displaced royalty in America during the war). The cast all are very good, and it has some interesting little insights of history. I noticed that one of the shooting locations was the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. And, that dog that we see! Could it be President Roosevelt's own Scottish Terrier, Fala? According to sources, including Wikipedia, Fala was played in this film by a stand-in pooch named Whiskers.Many movies about World War II have shown the preparedness at home in England, and some American home front films have shown women taking up jobs in industry. But I don't recall any film before this that showed emergency training and support by women in the U.S. I don't know if the women's support group here was real or fictitious but a couple funny lines came at its expense. When Eddie suggests they go see the sights together, Jean says she can't until later because it's her day to work with the women's volunteer group. Dave says, "She's a major lieutenant." Eddie says "A major lieutenant? There's no such thing." Dave says, "There is in her crew. Everybody's something. Mrs. Maloney is a double sergeant general colonel, second class."Another plus in this film is a look inside an early 1940s commercial aircraft that had sleeping berths. People today may find it hard to believe, but before deregulation of the airline industry in the late 1970s, airlines used to offer many amenities on board. My first flight was in 1962, but I had never seen a plane with sleeping berths. The one the boys are flying in this film seems more like a Pullman railroad car inside the cabin. Pullman sleeping cars were a thing of the past by the late 1960s, but a number of older films have scenes that show us what they looked like.Bob Cummings actually served in the Army Air Force during WW II. He joined in November 1942 and served as a flight instructor. While this film came out in late October, 1943, that was a year after it had been made. Cummings was taught to fly while in high school in Joplin, MO, by his godfather, Orville Wright. Wright and his brother Wilbur were the first men to build and successfully fly a plane – in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, NC.Cummings gave high school friends rides in his plane. When the U.S. government began licensing flight instructors, Bob Cummings was issued the very first flight instructor certificate. Besides his flying credentials, Cummings had a very colorful background in acting. He successfully imitated an upper crust Englishman to gain stage roles in England and on Broadway. He later portrayed a rich Texan to get a start in films in Hollywood. In the 1930s he reverted to his real name and had a successful career in comedy, drama and mystery films, and on radio and TV shows through the 1950s.Cummings isn't remembered much today, but he was well known and liked for his talent in the mid-20th century. He never became a super star, but played in some memorable films and with top performers of the day. He began using methamphetamines in the mid-1950s and his addiction hurt his career from then on and contributed to two divorces. He died of kidney failure and pneumonia at age 80 in 1990.This film is light entertainment with some fine movie stars of the time. It's a fun film fit for the whole family.

MARIO GAUCI This certainly ranks among the weakest winners of a top Oscar (best original screenplay, written by the director) from Hollywood's golden age; interestingly enough, all its competitors were not only war pictures (which may well have resulted in a lockdown!) but superior to it – AIR FORCE, IN WHICH WE SERVE (1942), THE NORTH STAR and, the only one I have yet to watch, SO PROUDLY WE HAIL! It is a frothy romantic comedy by Warner Bros. whose concern with nobility, tradition and duty must have seemed pretty old hat and not a little silly during wartime! Olivia De Havilland had outgrown her Errol Flynn leading lady mode by this time, landing even a couple of Academy Award nominations into the bargain – and two statuettes would be coming her way before the decade was out; with this in mind, comedy was never her forte, which is amply proved here – not that the role offered much in the way of inspiration!While a modicum of pleasure is derived throughout from the complications that invariably arise when traveling European princess De Havilland is mistaken for a refugee by pilot Robert Cummings, it too often targets real neurotic ailments like Curt Bois' nervous tick and De Havilland's own insomnia (which sees her downing some six sleeping pills in quick succession from four different people!). In the heroine's eagerness to do her bit for the war effort, she even agrees to serve as a live dummy for trainee nurses.The supporting cast includes old reliables such as Charles Coburn and a wasted Gladys Cooper as De Havilland's rather insufferable uncle (the exact opposite to his impish character in Ernst Lubitsch's HEAVEN CAN WAIT from the same year!) and secretary respectively, Jack Carson and a young Jane Wyman as Cummings' pal and his (atypically glamorous for her) wife, and Harry Davenport as a Justice of the Peace brought in to marry the two leads against Coburn's wishes.The latter scene occurs during a state visit to the White House – where Cummings is eventually obliged to drop his American citizenship if he is to become Prince Consort (but which he vehemently refuses to do) – and which even presumes us to swallow the ruse that the American president would disguise himself as a cop and stand guard at the door behind which the clandestine ceremony is taking place!!

theowinthrop There is something pathetic about how World War II hurt the institution of monarchy throughout Europe (and nearly Japan as well). In Western Europe most of the monarchs fled the onslaught of the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the most notable exceptions being the rulers of Denmark and Belgium. But it is instructive to remember what happened to them. The King of Denmarck remained defiant of the Nazis (if basically powerless) and even (to his immortal glory) purposely wore a Jewish star on his royal tunic when the Nazis began imposing their anti-Semitic policies on the Danish Jewish population. On the other hand, King Leopold III of Belgium did not show a finer spirit (though he always insisted he did the right thing). Leopold willingly surrendered to the Germans and cooperated with them. His reason for this was to protect his people. This (of course) did not include the Jewish population in Belgium. After the war the Allies were not very happy with Leopold (as they were with the Danish King). Neither were the Belgians, most of whom compared Leopold's cowardice (their view) with his father Albert's heroic defense of Belgium in World War I, that made King Albert one of the great heroes of his time. In 1951, Leopold had to abdicate in favor of his son Bauduin I. Leopold died in 1973, never recovering any popularity with his people.Eastern Europe was similar, some monarchs proving heroic even to the point of death. King Boris of Bulgaria had to make a devil's pact with the Nazis in the face of Soviet aggression. But he refused to agree with the transportation of Jews (Bulgaria's population agreed with Boris - 90 percent of the Jewish population of Bulgaria survived World War II, the highest in all Europe among occupied countries). In 1943 he again refused, and died in some sudden, unexpected way while flying home from a meeting with Hitler. To this day poison or some other odd murder devise (depressurizing the cabin of Boris's plane has been suggested) may have killed him. The nation threw out the Coburg family as royal family when the Russians set up their puppet Communist regime. But when the Communists were finally overturned, the Coburgs were welcomed back. The monarchy wasn't restored, but the current head of the house was elected Prime Minister for awhile.Most of those monarchs who fled settled in England or the U.S. or Canada for the duration. The only one who was able to return to his throne during the war was Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, as the British kicked the Italians out of that country. After the war the luckiest of the monarchs was Hirohito of Japan. Although there is still controversy about how deeply involved in the aggressions of the 1930s and 1940s he was (the title of one study, THE IMPERIAL CONSPIRACY, tells that suspicion), he was smart enough to know when to throw in the towel in the face of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was able to show to General Douglas MacArthur that he could be a damned good constitutional monarch. That's why Japan still has a royal family.Only a handful of movies deal with the flight of the royals to Allied (but non-Communist) lands. The most notable ones are WHERE'S THERE HOPE, wherein Bob Hope is an unknown heir to a Balkan throne who has to be protected by Signe Hasso, and this film, PRINCESS O'ROURKE. Written by Norman Krasna (the screenplay won him an Oscar), it tells of how one of the heirs to the throne of an invaded kingdom (Olivia De Haviland) is mistaken for a maid by an American Air Force pilot (Bob Cummings), and how he and she slowly fall in love. The comedy works here as the story is built to show the so-called superiority of the equality of Americans (at least Caucasian, Christian Americans) over old world aristocrats and out-of-date monarchies. There are some lovely bits in it. Charles Coburn plays De Haviland's uncle, a crusty old snob. But while initially opposed to the union, he begins changing his mind when he realizes that Cummings comes from a family of breeders (he has five brothers, and his father had seven, or some such set of numbers). Smiling and acting like he is considering purchasing a brood mare for breeding purposes, he keeps repeating those figures like they are a mantra. It is only when Cummings refuses the idea of his kids losing their American character and citizenship that Coburn's harsher snobbery returns.The film is famous also for the appearance (in his only movie role) of F.D.R.'s "little dog Fala" as himself. The final sequences in the film were filmed at the White House (actually quite an achievement for any studio in wartime). The best moment is at the end, when Cummings upon leaving with his bride after a secret White House marriage tips an "aide" watching at the door. We never see the face of the aide in question, but I imagine afterward he roared with laughter while having a cigarette and possibly one of his own martinis.

Neil Doyle Norman Krasna wrote a delightful script that is played to the hilt by Olivia de Havilland, Robert Cummings, Jane Wyman and Jack Carson--not to mention Charles Coburn. Interesting to note that de Havilland and Wyman would be up for Best Actress Oscars three years later (To Each His Own, The Yearling). Wyman was so impressive as Jack Carson's wise-cracking wife that Billy Wilder decided to use her for 'The Lost Weekend' in a more dramatic role. De Havilland's sleeping pill scene early on gets the film off to a breezy start--she even lapses into a little French (long before she became a Parisian in real life). All in all, she does a wonderful job as the Princess in love with commoner (Robert Cummings)and facing a few twists and turns of plot before the ending. John Huston, her boyfriend at the time, was said to have coached her in the role. Jack Carson and Jane Wyman have good supporting roles--and Charles Coburn has some amusing scenes as de Havilland's overprotective uncle. Ten years later, 'Roman Holiday' gave us another variation on this theme. One of de Havilland's better comedy roles.