Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? **** (1957, Jayne Mansfield, Tony Randall, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Mickey Hargitay, Groucho Marx) – Classic Film Review 3248

Writer-producer-director Frank Tashlin follows up his 1956 success The Girl Can’t Help It that made a movie star of Jayne Mansfield by making a film of her concurrent stage success Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957 with Mansfield and Tony Randall.

Tashlin’s witty 1957 satire on TV commercials has a simple but entertaining premise in which nervous advertising executive Rockwell P Hunter (Randall) talks sex symbol movie star Rita Marlowe (Mansfield) into endorsing a new stay-put lipstick to save his career. But, in return, he has to pretend to be her new lover.

The delightful, underrated Mansfield flamboyantly re-creates her role in the Broadway show by George Axelrod, and Randall is the perfect foil for her. Indeed, all the movie’s participants are seen on their best form here.

The saturated colours in Joe MacDonald’s Fifties trendy widescreen cinematography and the self-consciously wacky direction style reflect Tashlin’s earlier career as a free-wheeling animator, whose cartoons favoured fast editing, wild gags and weird angles. One of the few directors to succeed in jumping from animation to live action movies, he is known for directing his cartoons like live-action films and his live-action films like cartoons.

Also in the cast are Betsy Drake as Jenny Wells, Joan Blondell as Violet, John Williams as Irving La Salle Jr and Henry Jones as Henry Rufus, Mickey Hargitay as Bobo Branigansky, Groucho Marx as George Schmidlap, Barbara Eden as Miss Carstairs, Larry Kerr, Lili Gentle, Georgia Carr and Dick Whittinghill.

At the end, instead of saying ‘The End’, it says ‘The Very Living End’.

Apparently, Mamie Van Doren turned down the role of Rita Marlowe.

Betsy Drake died on October 27 2015, aged 92.

Frank Tashlin was born on February 19 1913 as Francis Fredrick von Taschlein and died on May 5 1972, aged 59.

Tony Randall died on May 17 2004, aged 84.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 3248

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