Princess Rosalie of Romanzia (Eleanor Powell) doesn’t care much about her status. While studying at Vassar, she keeps her title a secret and enjoys doing normal college student things like going to football games. She has a big crush on Dick Thorpe (Nelson Eddy), a Cadet at West Point and top football player on their team. When they meet at a party, he falls in love with her too, not having any clue who she really is, and he agrees to meet her again in Romanzia.
He also doesn’t realize that Rosalie’s father, the King (Frank Morgan), has already announced her engagement to Prince Paul (Tom Rutherford). Rosalie doesn’t love Paul and Paul is more interested in Rosalie’s friend Brenda (Ilona Massey). Determined to not miss their date, even if it means getting in trouble at school, he flies all the way to Europe to meet up with her. He’s greeted with a hero’s welcome by the King himself, who invites him to come enjoy the big festival going on. At the festival, who else would he see doing an elaborate dance performance but Rosalie?
At first, Dick is thrilled to be reunited with Rosalie, but it isn’t long before he finds out the truth about who she is and who she’s engaged to. Before she can explain that she doesn’t love Paul at all, he leaves her to fly back to West Point. But Rosalie isn’t about to give up that easily and follows him back.
If Eleanor Powell wasn’t dancing, Rosalie did nothing for me. The story wasn’t anything remarkable; it didn’t hold my interest and it felt like it went on for way too long. And I had to take off even more points for all the scenes of Frank Morgan with that creepy ventriloquist’s dummy. The only things I liked about Rosalie were Eleanor Powell’s dance numbers, which were absolutely dazzling. Her number dancing to the song “Rosalie” is certainly one of the all-time greats. Rosalie was directed by W.S. Van Dyke, famously nicknamed “One Take Van Dyke,” and I would love to know how many takes were involved in the filming of that scene.
