If Only You Could Cook

William A. Seiter's 1935 film, If Only You Could Cook, is classified as a screwball comedy (it's part of a collection called "Icons of Screwball Comedy"), but it really isn't. Screwball comedies require constant motion, and very few people move at much speed in this film. But it's an affable curiosity from the period, and stars one of the great performers of that genre, Jean Arthur.

The film starts by focusing on Herbert Marshall, the suave head of a automobile comedy. He's set to marry a woman he doesn't love (he has money, she has a famous family) and then he's shot down in a boardroom, who refuses to sign off on his futuristic auto designs. He takes refuge in a park, and finds himself sitting next to a young woman (Arthur), who is looking for a job. She assumes, given that it's the depression, that he's looking for a job, too. He plays along, and they find an ad requiring two people--one a cook, the other a butler.

Marshall, figuring he needs a break from his life, helps her out, though she remains unaware of his true identity. They get the job, but the man who owns the estate is a gangster (Leo Carrilli). He's temperamental about his food, but soft-hearted, too, and because he loves Arthur's cooking, he ignores the warnings of his henchman (Lionel Stander) that something is fishy (he points out that Marshall sleeps on the porch, and waltzed into the office of the auto magnate without a problem).

All of this is served up very mildly--nothing zany here, folks. The closest to screwball comes when Marshall is kidnapped from his wedding by the mobsters, as Carilli has decided he will make him marry Arthur. I've never seen Marshall before--he's kind of a joy, very like George Sanders in his unflappable Britishness. Arthur, the queen of screwball comedy, gives it her all, though there isn't much to her part.