| If You Could Only Cook | |
|---|---|
Jean Arthur's lipstick traces on Herbert Marshall (left) and Leo Carrillo |
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| Directed by | William A. Seiter |
| Produced by | Everett Riskin |
| Written by | F. Hugh Herbert (story) Howard J. Green Gertrude Purcell |
| Starring | Herbert Marshall Jean Arthur |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 30, 1935 |
| Running time | 70-72 minutes |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
If You Could Only Cook is a 1935 screwball comedy of mistaken identity starring Herbert Marshall as a frustrated automobile executive and Jean Arthur as a young woman who talks him into posing as her husband so they can land jobs as a butler and a cook.
Contents |
Jim Buchanan (Marshall), wealthy president of Buchanan Motor Company, is engaged to Evelyn Fletcher (Inescort), a henpecking aristocrat who is interested in Jim for his money. When Jim's fellow executives reject his plan to introduce a new automobile design, he decides to take a vacation.
Declaring himself "sick and tired of everything", Jim goes for a walk in the park, where he meets a young woman named Joan Hawthorne (Arthur). Joan is having trouble finding a job, and she was recently evicted from her apartment. Assuming he is also a job hunter, she asks Jim to pose as her husband so they can apply for a combined job opening for a butler and a cook. Without revealing his true identity, he agrees.
The faux couple, calling themselves "Mr. and Mrs. Burns", are soon hired by Michael Rossini (Carrillo). To improve his butling skills, Jim sneaks out to his own home at night and takes lessons from his own butler. He also takes some of his automobile sketches from his office to show to Joan. Impressed by his designs, she shows the sketches to an executive with one of Buchanan Motor Company's competitors, who recognizes them as Buchanan's and has her arrested. Having fallen in love with Jim and being told they are stolen, she refuses to help the police find him.
Meanwhile, Jim has decided to tell Joan who he is. When she misses a lunch appointment on their day off, he writes her a letter, abandons his position as a butler, and returns to Evelyn and his life as a businessman. Rossini, who has just organized a bootlegging gang, learns of Jim's trip to the office from his assistant Flash (Stander), who is suspicious of Jim and has been tailing him since he started the job. Angered by Jim's betrayal of Joan, Rossini orders his henchmen to kill Jim at his wedding, but Joan admits her love for Jim and begs Rossini to spare his life. Rossini arrives at the wedding just in time to stop his henchman.
Rossini and his men return to the mansion with Jim and a justice of the peace to marry Jim and Joan. Joan refuses and locks herself in her room, but Jim embraces the plan and blackmails Rossini and his men into persuading her to change her mind. Rossini pretends to argue with Jim, Flash fires his gun in the air, and Jim collapses onto the floor, pretending to be hit. The deception works: Joan opens the door and rushes to his side.