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Penny Princess (1952), a whimsical, British Technicolor comedy filmed in the mountains of Spain, is about a New York shop-girl (Yolande Donlan) who inherits a small European principality known as Lompidorra, which is facing financial disaster. When a London department store cheese salesman (Dirk Bogarde) comes to visit her newfound country, the two come up with a unique mixture of cheese and Schnapps - dubbed "Schneeze" - which they believe can rescue Lompidorra's economy.

The New Jersey-born Donlan had acted in a few Hollywood movies in 1940, but they were all small roles and nothing came of them. (Her father, James Donlan, had made a career of mostly uncredited bit parts, appearing in over 100 pictures from 1929-1939.) She shifted her concentrations to the stage and eventually found herself on London's West End, successfully playing the dumb blonde in Born Yesterday. She stayed on in that city and attempted to renew her film career. Beginning a professional and personal relationship with British director Val Guest, she acted in eight movies for him; Penny Princess was the fourth.

Stardom was not to be, however, and her film career ultimately fizzled out once again. But she married Guest in 1954, and that partnership lasted until his death in 2006. Guest wrote and/or directed dozens of movies from the early 1940s to the early 1980s, and while he directed in all genres, he's probably best known for sci-fi/horror classics such as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) (aka The Creeping Unknown) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961).

For Penny Princess, Guest originally wanted Montgomery Clift or Cary Grant, but they each turned him down. He was in the process of trying to land an uninterested William Holden when he decided instead to settle for 30-year-old Dirk Bogarde, who had yet to achieve his great fame.

Comedies were unusual for Bogarde - especially at this point in his career - but as he told Picturegoer a few years later, "I'd just finished Hunted (1952) and wanted to try my hand at something light. I heard about Penny Princess and practically forced the director, Val Guest, to give me a test. The result was terrible. I don't think he's ever quite forgiven me." Later on, Bogarde said, "Penny Princess was about as funny as a baby's coffin."

Not everyone felt that way. The Hollywood Reporter declared: "Very amusing situations, and the dialogue sparkles. Bogarde is a personable romantic lead and a smooth light comedian." On the other hand, London's Daily Mail observed that "Dirk Bogarde, a serious young actor, has a certain amount of trouble trying to be romantically funny in his pajamas."

Producer: Frank Godwin, Earl St. John
Director: Val Guest
Screenplay: Val Guest
Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth
Film Editing: Alfred Roome
Art Direction: Maurice Carter
Music: Ronald Hanmer
Cast: Yolande Donlan (Lindy Smith), Dirk Bogarde (Tony Craig), Edwin Styles (Chancellor Cobbler), Reginald Beckwith (Minister of Finance), Kynaston Reeves (Burgomaster), Peter Butterworth (Julien).
C-91m.

by Jeremy Arnold