If You Could Only Cook: 1935, dir. William A. Seiter. Seen at Alamo Downtown (Nov. 2).
I saw If You Could Only Cook on my birthday, which was also election night. I was surprised by the turnout. Who knew there would be so many people in Austin who would prefer an obscure Jean Arthur movie to watching election results? But apparently there are a lot of film geeks in town, or at least people who love charming little 1930s romantic comedies.
If You Could Only Cook is one of those charming little movies. Jean Arthur, a victim to the Depression-era economy, is trying to find a job so she won’t have to sleep on a park bench. You can imagine that this might have some relevance to today’s viewers. Herbert Marshall, a big-name automobile designer, somehow ends up on a park bench with her and is so taken with her that he pretends he’s out of work, too. They find a job listing for a married couple to work as cook and butler and decide to apply together.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? Of course you can. No surprises, and somewhat artificial, but delightful just the same. The dialogue is often sharp and funny, and the overall tone is frothy and lighthearted.
Jean Arthur is generally sweet and cute in a generic Thirties heroine way, but every so often we see a glimmer of her more hard-boiled, wisecracking personality shine through. I admit my favorite Jean Arthur movie is A Foreign Affair (1948), in which she is made to look unattractive and act stern and almost schoolmarmish, but she does it beautifully. That is a far cry from the younger, bouncier Arthur in this movie, but you can see the underlying similarity at times.
Herbert Marshall … I never have understood the appeal of Herbert Marshall, and I have often felt that he appeared in so many early 1930s movies only because no one had discovered Cary Grant yet. Or even David Niven. He’s fine in this movie, does just what he should, but isn’t particularly inspiring.
One interesting thing to note about If You Could Only Cook, if you like studying romantic comedies, is its ending, which is a twist on the “runaway bride” theme made popular by It Happened One Night. If You Could Only Cook has a runaway groom, which is a novelty (although it was used again a couple of years later in Swing Time). Well, it’s more of a kidnapped groom than a runaway groom, but the idea behind it is the same—the groom leaves the bride-to-be at the altar, and while it might seem involuntary to the bridal party, we all know he didn’t want to get married to that stuck-up old Frida Inescort.
I would recommend If You Could Only Cook, but it’s not available on DVD or VHS, so the odds of anyone getting to see it are slim. I could see it appearing late at night on TCM or AMC, one of those hidden gems that you find suddenly while channel surfing and which pass the time quite pleasantly, like Midnight or Breakfast for Two or The Invisible Woman. It’s not something I would go out of my way to see again, or to recommend to anyone particularly, unless that person was doing a special study of Thirties romantic comedies, or the films of Herbert Marshall or Jean Arthur, that kind of thing. But if I were flipping through the channels one night and found it, I would be delighted to watch bits of it again.
And let me tell you, it was certainly more fun to watch than election results. I don’t regret skipping the early returns for a comedy that was meant, when it was made, to be escapist.
Yes, bless the Austin Film Society for saving us from election night returns! My husband and I sat right up in front, and thought it was totally charming and pretty funny, too. We loved it when Jean Arthur, as the aspiring chef, insists that you must ony wave the garlic over the pot, never letting it actually have contact with the sauce.
Leo Carillo was always Pancho from the Cisco Kid in my childhood – but he got to play a different and very interesting character in this movie.
Maybe you’re still too young to appreciate Herbert Marshall. One story is that his very formal walk is a result of a leg lost in WW One… don’t know if that is true. I love his voice and that dry, slightly regretful sort of throw-away humor. Wait a couple of decades Jette, and he might seem more appealing!
Yes, I’ve read that Marshall had a wooden leg below the knee. The thing is, even though I’m not fond of him, I do like so many of the movies he’s in, like “Trouble in Paradise.” So perhaps as you say, as the years go by he’ll grow on me. I didn’t realize who Leo Carillo was … thanks for pointing that out!