She Couldn't Take It Plot Summary and Details

When he's shipped off to prison on a tax-evasion charge, millionaire Van Dyke (Walter Connolly) breathes a sigh of relief: at least he'll be free of his dizzy, spendthrift wife (Billie Burke) and spoiled-rotten daughter Carol (Joan Bennett). Once behind bars, Van Dyke strikes up a friendship with amiable reformed bootlegger Ricardi (George Raft). Since Ricardi is to be sprung first, Van Dyke suggests that the ex-crook take on the task of "taming" the incorrigible Carol. Unwilling to be stifled by a former jailbird (even a good-looking one), Carol decides to get even by persuading one of Ricardi's former cohorts, a shady character named Tex (Lloyd Nolan) to stage a fake kidnapping. Trouble is, Tex kidnaps the girl for real, obliging Ricardi to race to her rescue -- but only after deliberately breaking every traffic law known to man, so that he'll be pursued by a veritable battalion of motorcycle cops (this hilarious finale was later re-used in the 1941 Buster Keaton two-reeler So You Won't Squawk). A heady blend of screwball comedy and crime melodrama, She Couldn't Take It is one of the fastest and funniest films of 1935.