Friday, March 22, 2013

Come Out of the Kitchen  -  1915
Alice Duer Miller
282 pages
genre  -  Romance
my rating  -  3 out of 5 stars

This is the second time in a row that I've researched into the book I'm getting ready to blog about and realized that it had been made into a movie.  Marguerite Clark and Eugene O'Brien star in the 1919 film of Come Out of the Kitchen, and then there is a second British made movie loosely based on the book called Spring in Park Lane.  It was filmed in 1948 with Michael Wilding and Anna Neagle starring as the main characters.

Mr. Burton Crane (the book says he is under 30) rents a house from "one of the most aristocratic families south of the Mason and Dixon's", with the understanding that it comes complete with four servants. The butler seems young for his job but looks like he will function very well. The cook is beautiful and cooks like a dream. The maid is rather sullen and ungracious. And the 'Useful Boy' is inclined to be impertinent.

Within a few days Burton moves into his leased home with his lawyer, his almost fiancee and her mother. It doesn't take very long for the servants to make life difficult for Burton with amusing results. But, boy, can the cook deliver some delicious dishes. And she's beautiful, sweet and nice to talk to.

This story is easy to read, and didn't seem too long. There were quite a few scenes that made me chuckle out loud.  I think I enjoyed reading the book more the second (and third) time.

About the author  -

Alice Duer Miller was born in New York City on July 28, 1874 in to a wealthy family.  At the time of her entrance into society, her family had lost most of its fortune. She helped pay for her expenses at Barnard College by selling novels, poems and short essays.

She scored her first real success with Come Out of the Kitchen.  In 1940, she wrote the verse novel The White Cliffs.  The poem was spectacularly successful on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually selling almost a million copies - an unheard of number for a book of verse. The story was made into the 1944 film The White Cliffs of Dover, starring Irene Dunne.

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