Calm Yourself 1935

Preston ‘Pat’ Patton [Robert Young] is fired from his advertising job by Col. Allenby [Claude Gillingwater] when he is caught kissing Allenby’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth Allenby [Betty Furness]. This sharp setback sparks a quirky new plan: Pat creates Confidential Services Incorporated, a one‑man operation that promises to help clients calm themselves in any situation. He becomes the sole employee and even pretends to be a female secretary on the phone, yet his ambitious scheme floods New York with his letters advertising the service.

On his first assignment, Pat quickly veers off course by delivering the wrong drunk to a wife’s bed, a blunder that sets off a chain of comic missteps. Prominent banker Kenneth S. Rockwell [Ralph Morgan], well aware of Pat’s deceptions, nonetheless likes the idea and hires him. Rockwell is juggling a complicated family situation: his first wife left almost twenty years ago with their three‑month‑old daughter Rosalind Rockwell [Madge Evans], and Rockwell has just remarried a younger wife. He has arranged to keep Rosalind away while he evaluates his new wife.

Pat meets Rosalind at the afternoon train and concocts a tale designed to push her away from Rockwell. He claims her father is ready to ship her back to California and paints a picture of the ill‑tempered Col. Allenby, while insinuating that Pat and Mary Elizabeth are engaged. Rosalind, overhearing the argument from the car but hearing nothing precise, loses interest in her father. With only $25 to her name and a stubborn desire to remain in New York, she agrees to become Pat’s secretary. Mary Elizabeth grows jealous, and the two women clash as Pat refuses to fire Rosalind.

What follows is a wild, tangled web of misadventure that pulls in a baby, a Great Dane, and the police, all swirling around Pat and Rosalind in a brisk, farcical rhythm. As the misunderstandings accumulate, Rosalind and her father slowly inch toward a reunion, and she discovers that his age and a disappeared California backstory don’t quite line up with the image she had of him. The moment of truth arrives when Rockwell is about to introduce Rosalind to her father; instead, Rosalind and Pat share a private, affectionate kiss, and Pat declares their plans to marry. Rosalind resists briefly, but Pat’s charm wins the day as he breaks into a warm, confident embrace, closing the story with a hopeful, comic promise.

Calm yourself!