If You Could Only Cook

If You Could Only Cook
Jean Arthur's lipstick traces on Herbert Marshall (left) and Leo Carrillo
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.

Cast

• Herbert Marshall as Jim Buchanan, president of a car company
• Jean Arthur as Joan Hawthorne, an unemployed young woman
• Leo Carrillo as Mike Rossini, a shady businessman
• Lionel Stander as Flash, Rossini's right-hand man
• Alan Edwards as Bob Reynolds
• Frieda Inescort as Evelyn Fletcher, Jim's nagging, blue-blooded fiancée
• Gene Morgan as Al
• Ralf Harolde as Swig
• Matt McHugh as Pete
• Richard Powell as Chesty

Plot

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 just 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). She is a good cook; he improves his butling skills by sneaking out at night and taking lessons from his own butler. He also sneaks into his office and takes some of his automobile sketches to show to Joan. Impressed by his designs, on their day off she shows them to an executive with one of Buchanan's competitors, but he recognizes Buchanan's style, leading to her arrest for theft. Having fallen in love with Jim, she refuses to help the police find him.

Meanwhile, Jim has decided to tell Joan who he is. When she misses a lunch date while in jail, he writes her a letter, abandons his butler position, 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. Wanting Joan for himself, he has her bailed out and tells her the truth about Jim. She reacts by raging against Jim, so Rossini promptly orders his henchmen to kill Jim at his wedding. To ingratiate himself with Joan, he tells her about this, but she declares that she loves Jim after all and begs Rossini to spare his life.

Rossini arrives at the wedding just in time to stop the murder. He and his men now return home with Jim at gunpoint, and fetch a justice of the peace to marry Jim and Joan. Joan refuses and locks herself in her room, but Jim embraces the plan. Since Rossini's men were seen kidnapping him, he blackmails the gang into persuading her to change her mind. Outside Joan's room, 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.

External links

• If You Could Only Cook at the TCM Movie Database
• If You Could Only Cook at the Internet Movie Database
• If You Could Only Cook at AllRovi