“If You Could Only Cook” Is Riotous

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 65, 18 March 1936, Page 11

“If You Could Only Cook” Is Riotous

HERBERT MARSHALL AND JEAN ARTHUR DELIGHTFUL

(Regent: Screening Friday.)

The world would be a pretty drab place if it were not for jovial, funfilled personalities like Herbert Marshall, Jean Arthur, Leo Carrillo, and Lionel Stander, stars and principals of Columbia’s new romantic comedy, “If You Could Only Cook.”

Together, with the very helpful direction of William A. Seiter, who knows a comedy situation when he sees one, and some exceptionally amusing dialogue from thee joint pens of Howard J. Green and Gertrude Purcell, they make the film a sparkling and happy thing. Marshall has always been adept at comedy. He is an artful actor, with a voice that falls easily on the cars and a manner that generally gives him command of whatever scene he happens to bo playing. But in this picture he gets a run for his money, in the shape of the gleeful Miss Arthur, who makes her bow as a fully-fledged star.

This is a young lady who can deliver a line with the best of them. She and Marshall put on a charming duel that will have you grinning from start to finis.

In a nutshell, the story concerns a disgruntled millionaire, who is about to marry a girl lie doesn’t love, and an out-of-work young lady who meets him on a park bench. Thinking him a fellowmember of the army of unemployed, the girl invites him to go with her and answer an advertisement for a married couple to serve as butler and maid. On the spur of the moment he accepts; and, pretending to be married, they get the job. Of course, a millionaire betrothed to a society girl can’t go off and be a butler without things happening, especially if that millionaire falls in love with another girl with blue eyes who knows how to cook.

Leo Carrilo, as the big-shot racketeer and epicure in whose homo the unmarried ‘‘married couple’’ is employed, does some of his best work to date. His appelation as the best-loved bad man o' the screen holds true.' Lionel'Stander, the buzz-saw-voiced poet of “The Scoundrel,” is outstandingly funny as Carrillo’s henchman. And Frieda Ine'scourt does very well in a small role, as the, girl Marshall is engaged to marry.

Harold Lloyd, now working in Paramount’s “The Milky .Way,” is an adept at ‘‘magic” parlour tricks and belongs to the American Society c: Magicians.