"Cross Country Romance" was an RKO studio rendition of the runaway heiress films that were especially popular during the Great Depression years. After Columbia Pictures had its smashing success at the box office and the Academy Awards with "It Happened One Night" in 1934, with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, other studios made one or more such films. For variety, they would combine other elements with the comedy and romance, including capers, adventures and even spying. One of the best of the latter was MGM's "Love on the Run" of 1936 with Gable, Franchot Tone and Joan Crawford.
Another plot theme that was used frequently over the first three decades of sound, was the traveling romance. Those too were usually comedies. They didn't have heiresses on the run, but usually were just about regular people or traveling entertainers, etc. Occasionally, one might have a wealthy male going incognito for some reason.
Well, this cross country romance has both the runaway heiress and the travel adventure across the U. S. Wendy Barrie is the rich bride-to-be on the run. Gene Raymond is a medical doctor who's on his way by car and trailer from Boston to San Francisco. From there, he plans to go to China to join a famous medical researcher looking for a cure for a type of leukemia.
Raymond and Barrie were in another cross-country film that was a very good comedy-romance and that involved a criminal element. That was an earlier RKO film, "Love on a Bet" of 1936. It had very good comedy in the dialog and with some hilarious antics and scenarios. Unfortunately, this film has much less of both. Raymond has a mostly straight man role here, and the few lines that he has that were probably meant for humor just aren't that good Barrie is okay with what she has, and the supporting cast in places provide some of the best humor.
The best comedy segments occur in the last quarter of the film, when they travel through Omaha and then return the same way a couple days later. A revised screenplay would have given this film a boost. The dialog doesn't get any funnier than this exchange between the Omaha police captain, G. G. Burke, and Raymond's Dr. Larry Smith, whom Barrie's Diane North had told was her husband, Dr. James McGillicuddy
Captain Burke, "Oh, I suppose the next thing you'll be telling me is that Miss North kidnapped herself." Dr. Larry Smith, "As a matter of fact, that's exactly what happened."
