If You Could Only Cook (1935) is another
Depression-era screwball comedy that uses the Great Depression as a springboard
to humor. It also serves as a backdrop to contrast the silliness with the bleak realities
of everyday life that presented challenges and provided plots.
Like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1935), a movie of the
same year that we discussed recently here, this movie also features star Jean Arthur
and brings along favorite gravely-voiced tough guy Lionel Stander in a
supporting role. He is one of the few clear-eyed
and sensible people in this movie who wears his cynicism like a shield. Everybody puts up defenses in the Great
Depression, and some have more survival skills than others.
On the other end of the spectrum of cynicism is Frieda
Inescort in a brief role as the bluenose fiancée of Herbert Marshall, who slyly
seems to drive him to the altar in the manner of closing a business deal. She has social standing in a respected old family
that has, through generations, lost its fortune. Marshall is new money, an automotive engineer
who owns his own car manufacturing company. She and her former debutante friends see it as
the perfect match.
The movie opens on their wedding rehearsal in the family
mansion, their friends and attendants, like Miss Inescort, just going through
the motions of what a real, meaningful wedding celebration should be. When Herbert Marshall leaves after the
rehearsal to return back to work and a board meeting at his company, we see
that he is not exactly happy. Though he
looks forward to his wedding, a sadness, a sense of dissatisfaction nags at
him. Frieda Inescort neither requires
nor wants wooing. Herbert is a romantic,
and would like to have the experience of sentimental romance with a partner who
could share life as an adventure.
He faces disappointment at work, too. His executive board does not approve of his
new, futuristic, and somewhat cartoony designs for a line of autos. He is told, “This company is in no condition
to spend money on wild ideas” for his car designs, because the public has no
money to spend on the cars.
Herbert’s response is a bit of fiscal cheerleading: “This
country’s on its feet again, and soon it’ll be spending as it never did
before.”
By 1935, the year of this film’s release, the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt did reduce unemployment since he took office in 1933 (and would continue to drift downward as the decade ended) but we were a
long way from spending as we never did before.
When it comes to survival tactics, Mr. Marshall's character survives the gloom by
being naively optimistic.
But fed up with his frustrations at his company, as well as
in his personal life, he goes to a park as a brief respite, an afternoon’s
escape to brood. It turns into the kind
of adventure he would have liked to have with his fiancée, Frieda
Inescort. Instead, he is a far luckier
man; he discovers Jean Arthur.
She is on the bench he has chosen to sit upon and brood,
reading the want ads in a newspaper, her suitcase by her side. She’s down to her last nickel and has lost
her digs. But her survival skill is
grit, determination, and belief in herself.
By his presence in the park in the middle of the day and perhaps by his
dejected demeanor, she assumes he is also out of a job.
“Jobs are hard to find, aren’t they?” she remarks
sympathetically and offers him the “help wanted-male” section. “It’s tough these days. About 200 people for every position.” Not unlike today.
We are given to understand she is used to office work, but
she comments, perusing the servant positions, that “the only good ones are for
couples,” a cook and butler, fetching $175 per month. “That’s real money.”
Mr. Marshall, amused, responds, echoing the title, “Now if
you could only cook.”
She admits to being a good cook, having kept house for her
widowed father since she was a girl.
Then a light dawns and she suggests they apply for the job together as a
cook and butler.
Here we have a switch in the usual screwball scenario: she
is the practical schemer, and he is the “madcap heiress,” persuaded to go along
on a ridiculous romp. It’s a fun
premise, and since one never takes fairy tales or screwball comedies seriously,
we do not wonder why, since he’s rich, he just doesn’t find her a job in his
corporation. He clearly takes an
interest in her and wants to help her, but with very human self-interest, he
sees this as a final escapade before resigning himself to the seemingly
inevitable world of a dull marriage and an unfulfilling career.
Their prospective new employer is a gangster and former
bootlegger played by Leo Carrillo, who fancies himself a gourmand and is
especially pleased with Jean Arthur’s demonstration of merely holding a clove
of garlic over a pan of sauce to infuse its flavor (I want to think she was putting
him on, but again, one should never look for sense in a screwball comedy).
Lionel Stander is Carrillo’s right-hand man, who vets all
employees and anyone ever trying to get close to his boss. He is shrewd and will soon suspect the new
butler and cook are not what they seem.
Carrillo, for all his dangerous authority, is as grandiose as a
character in an opera, flighty, passionate, and with the kind of zest for life
we sense Herbert Marshall would like to have.
The “couple” is shown to their new digs—a room over the
garage. It has one double bed.
Mr. Marshall will take a daybed couch out on the porch,
assuring her with good humor that she does not need to worry about being unable
to lock the door. When Jean retires that
night to the double bed, he climbs down the trellis and heads back to his
apartment to get clothes and to get a few lessons in how to be a butler from
his own butler, played by Romaine Callendar.
Callendar, from an old English acting family, did a lot of stage work,
and this was his first film since a couple of silents in 1918. He frequently played butlers.
Bess Flowers, our favorite uncredited extra, can be spotted
at the wedding rehearsal.
Romaine Callendar teaches Herbert Marshall to greet people
at the door. The wedding is a week away. Herbert has one week of fun left.
Soon, the lark turns complicated, as both begin to experience
possessive feelings for one another, if not love. She is annoyed and complaining when she discovers
he has been out all night, and dismisses his excuse of returning for his
clothes, as if he is a wayward husband caught carousing. When Leo Carrillo, who begins to fancy Jean,
puts his amorous moves on her, Herbert gets angry, warning Carrillo off, defending
his “wife.”
And bloodhound Lionel Stander, discovering their separate
sleeping arrangements, does not believe they are married. But they fight as if they are married.
The experience has woken Herbert Marshall up—he wants more
from life than this playful situation, and decides to return to his company at
night, take his experimental designs for cars, and start over. He shows the designs to Jean, and she likes
them, taking far more interest in his work than Frieda does. They are lounging on the double bed with the
designs, and he kisses her. It’s okay,
though, both of them still have their feet on the floor.
But Lionel has followed him, and he thinks Marshall has broken
into the company to steal the designs.
It’s their day off and they plan to meet for lunch, but Jean
says first she has an errand. She takes
his designs to sell to another company, hoping to give Marshall the confidence he
needs in his work. But the company
notifies the board of Marshall’s company that Jean has stolen these designs
that belong to them. Poor Jean is nabbed
by the cops, but Lionel Stander, who follows pretty much everybody, tells the
boss that Jean is being interrogated, whereupon Leo Carrillo sends his boys to
get her out.
Neither Lionel nor Jean thinks, at this point, that the
designs are really Herbert’s, because he has used a fake name, and they think
he has stolen the designs.
Leo Carrillo criticizes Jean for being so naïve. “How did you happen to fall for it?”
She replies helplessly, “The Depression.”
Stander adds, incredulously, “I’ve heard of a lot of things
blamed on the Depression.” The
Depression, like Bess Flowers, always gets a bit part in 1930s screwball
comedies.
When they discover that Herbert is the famous car
manufacturer, Jean is angry and humiliated, thinking he was just “slumming” at
her expense, and Leo Carrillo helpfully says he has arranged a hit on him.
Jean is aghast and asks him to call it off, because…ready? She loves him.
Herbert, without much enthusiasm, has shown up in a morning
suit (or should that be "mourning"?) for his nuptials, and Leo, who has become protective of Jean, sends his
boys into the middle of the ceremony to kidnap Herbert. He’s not unwilling to go, but holding the
wedding party and guests at gunpoint is pretty funny.
The mob brings Herbert back to Jean, who is still mad at
him, but the gangsters trick Jean into revealing her true feelings by pretending
to shoot Herbert.
“Darling!” she sobs in his arms.
If it’s an odd way to find romance, well, blame it on the
Depression.
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From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books. From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.
