If You Could Only Cook (1935)

Just perfect...

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Auto titan Jim Buchanan is in a league with Henry Ford but in the dumps over an impending marriage to a cold fiancé and Luke warm reception to his latest models. Disconsolate, he finds himself sharing a park bench with Joan Hawthorne (Jean Arthur) a Depression victim in need of work. Unaware of Buchanan's status she gets him to agree to be a butler to her cook in order to attain employment with a wealthy mobster (Leo Carrillo). Seems they only want married couples. With everyone being less than upfront comic confusion reigns.If Only You Could Cook is a spry enough comedy with plenty of charm supplied by Herbert Marshall and Jean Arthur ably supported by the abrasive comic turns of mobsters Leo Carrillo and especially Lionel Stander who threatens to steal the picture. Director William Seiter assembles economically, as he sums up Buchanan's dual predicament in under ten minutes before encountering Hawthorne and focusing on the couple for the rest of the picture, the first hint of romance between them a brief harmless interlude with the ruse still playing itself out. By removing extraneous characters and situation he leaves it up to the four leads to carry the pace of this benign comedy in which they more than succeed.

His man Godfrey gets a wife and a cook on thus amusing screwball comedy where a wealthy automobile industrialist takes on a butler position with a stranger he met in the park posing His wife, a cook. She has no idea who he really is, while their rather eccentric boss didn't have a clue that he was a being had. All it took was Jean Arthur, as the cooking candidate, to waft a clove of garlic over a pot of sauce rather than drop the whole thing in. Herbert Marshall is the deadpan millionaire posing as a butler, while Leo Carrillo is the rather crass employer with a dubious career and gravel voiced Lionel Stander as his sour assistant.A year before the release of "My Man Godfrey", society got a poke in the nose with this dry screwball comedy which, while not quite a classic, is amusing extremely amusing. Carrillo, an underrated comic, steals every scene just by destroying every English word he speaks. Stander um is also dreadfully funny, filled with acid wit that brings on hysterics just by dropping an ordinary line. Frieda Ibescort is imperious as Marshall's nasty fiancé.Typical but well written and superbly acted, this is formula fluff that Stoll has enough surprises along the way to keep it fresh. Arthur gives the impression that she may know Marshall's true identity. Stander gets to follow Marshall around, giving some mistaken confusion to the busy plot. This isn't earth shaking, but has many fun moments that makes it quite delicious.

"If You Could Only Cook" is a small film apparently credited to Frank Capra at one point but actually not by Capra, made in 1935, and it stars Herbert Marshall, Jean Arthur, Lionel Stander and Leo Carillo. Carillo was the Cisco Kid's sidekick Pancho on the TV series that boomers may remember; and Lionel Stander's unmistakable voice will be remembered from the Robert Wagner TV show "Hart to Hart." This is a film made during the Depression, and it concerns a wealthy auto executive named Jim Buchanan (Herbert Marshall) who is about to be married to the right kind of woman and is dreading it. While sitting on a park bench trying to escape his board of directors and his fiancé, he meets a down to earth young woman (Jean Arthur) who is desperately looking for a job and can't find anything. Plus, she's just lost her room. She finds a job that pays well, but it's for a couple. She talks Jim into applying for it with her -- he's the butler and she's the cook in the home of a gangster (Carillo). Thanks to her sauce, she is hired. Thus begins Buchanan's double life. You can guess the rest.A very charming movie with a delightful performance by Arthur and a good one by Marshall. It's always hard to believe that Herbert Marshall was ever a leading man given the roles he had later on, but he was a type that went out of style -- very formal, well spoken, a little stuffy, modeled on the British. Films in the '30s were often based on plays, and the plays of that era dealt with class differences.Capra initiated a lawsuit against Columbia for crediting him with this film in England, where he was very popular, but Harry Cohn purchased "You Can't Take It With You" for him in exchange for dropping the suit. So a little film, never seen by Capra, paid him a big dividend.

If You Could Only Cook had been made over at MGM, Jean Arthur would have had her pick of leading men like Robert Montgomery, William Powell, Robert Young, or Franchot Tone all of who might have been a bit more believable as the auto tycoon who gets tired of his stuffy board of directors and walks out on them. As it was Columbia Harry Cohn got her Herbert Marshall is far better cast in more mature parts like in The Little Foxes or the head of MI5 in The List of Adrian Messenger. He really hasn't the touch for light fare like If You Could Only Cook.That's what happens to Marshall though, he walks out on his board of directors and a week before his wedding to Frieda Inescourt who's from a family with an old name, but no dough. On the park bench he runs into Jean Arthur who is one of the great mass of unemployed. They get to talking about food and Arthur sees in the want ads one for a married couple to be cook and butler on an estate. On a whim as these things are in screwball comedies, Marshall and her agree to pose as husband and wife.What they don't know is that who's hiring them is gangster Leo Carrillo who's particular about his food. Not unusual because if you remember Goodfellas the wise guys in stir were very particular about their food and were rich enough to buy what they want in the joint. Carrillo's number two, Lionel Stander, thinks these two just don't sound right.The rest of the film is the normal antics of mistaken identities and mistaken motives and finding out who really loves who after all. It's not a bad film, but not particularly a memorable one.But If You Could Only Cook attained a status way beyond its own importance in film history by becoming the object of a fraud perpetrated on the foreign markets by Harry Cohn. Seems as though when the film reached Europe, Cohn advertised it in the foreign markets as being a Frank Capra Production. When Capra found out about it, he went ballistic and ultimately his connection with Columbia was severed.The story is described in great detail in Capra's memoirs and the whole saga is a great example of the power those studios had back when they were at their height.In fact that whole story might make a great movie.