00:38Continuing our look at various cinematic butlers in love, our next film is from Columbia Pictures in 1935 and brings us the delightful Jean Arthur, just as she was about to make a breakthrough as a major star.
00:50That happened to her a year after our next movie, thanks to the 1936 Capra film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
00:56Our film is from 1935, it's titled, If You Could Only Cook.
01:01It's a story about an auto magnet, played by Herbert Marshall, who meets an unemployed cook, that's Jean Arthur, and he agrees to pretend to be her husband to help her get a job in a household where they only want a married couple of servants.
01:14Single people need not apply.
01:16Well, once they get hired, it turns out that their employer, played by Leo Carrillo, is a big-time gangster and bootlegger.
01:23It's very light comedy, directed by William Sider, best known at the time not for its stars or its story, but because of a controversy involving another Columbia Studio employee, director Frank Capra.
01:34When Columbia sent this film to England for distribution, Frank Capra had recently scored a huge hit with his 1934 comedy, It Happened One Night.
01:43So someone in the New York offices of Columbia Pictures decided it would raise the status of some of the smaller films made by Columbia Pictures if Frank Capra's name was on them, even though Capra had nothing to do with the making of these particular films.
01:58Nevertheless, a credit line saying a Frank Capra production was spliced onto the beginning of this film and other movies for their British release.
02:06Indeed, the deception did work.
02:09Movie houses in the UK snatched up this particular film, publicized Capra's name and connection to it, and people went to see it, see what they thought was a Frank Capra movie.
02:18That worked until Capra, back in the States, found out what Columbia Pictures was doing, and it went ballistic.
02:25He instigated a lawsuit against his boss, Harry Cohn, to whom he was under an ironclad contract.
02:30Eventually, things were worked out, Capra's name disassociated with all those non-Capra movies, but it did start Capra thinking about severing his ties with Columbia Studios, which he did do, although he had to wait six years and finish that ironclad contract with Columbia before he could split.
02:47Here from 1935, with no input whatsoever from Frank Capra, but directed by William Sider, who that same year of 1935 also directed the Irene Dunn, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers musical, Roberta.
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