Thirty Day Princess

Thirty-Day Princess
theatrical poster
Directed by	Marion Gering
Produced by	B.P. Schulberg
Written by	Story: Clarence Budington Kelland Adaptation: Sam Hellman Edwin Justus Mayer Screenplay: Preston Sturges Frank Partos
Starring	Sylvia Sidney Cary Grant Edward Arnold
Music by	Howard Jackson Rudolph G. Kopp John Leipold Harry Ruby Karl Hajos
Cinematography	Leon Shamroy
Edited by	Jane Loring
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	May 18, 1934
Running time	74 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Thirty-Day Princess is a 1934 Pre-Code comedy film starring Sylvia Sidney, Cary Grant and Edward Arnold. The film was based on a story of the same name by Clarence Budington Kelland (which appeared in Ladies' Home Journal in 1933), adapted by Sam Hellman and Edwin Justus Mayer, written by Preston Sturges and Frank Partos, and directed by Marion Gering.

On her way to New York to find financial backing for her impoverished country, the Ruritanian Kingdom of Taronia, Princess "Zizzi" Catterina (Sylvia Sidney) falls ill with the mumps and has to be quarantined for a month. In desperation, financier Richard Gresham (Edward Arnold), who is planning to issue $50 million in Taronian bonds, hires unemployed lookalike actress Nancy Lane (Sidney again) to impersonate the princess, and offers her a large bonus if she changes the mind of the chief opponent of the financial transaction, newspaper publisher Porter Madison III (Cary Grant).

Production on Thirty-Day Princess was to have begun on 28 February 1934, but was delayed because of the illness of William Collier Sr., who was scheduled to play the role of the "Managing editor". Collier was replaced and production began on 1 March.

Although Preston Sturges received a writing credit for the film's screenplay, he wrote in his autobiography that "not much" of his work was actually used. Sturges also said of B.P. Schulberg that "as a producer, [he] was accustomed to accepting praise for pictures as generals accept praise for the valor of their soldiers, and it thus seemed logical to him that the writers should feel the same general sense of shared accomplishment." Thirty-Day Princess was released on 18 May 1934.