Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

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Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
File:Will-success-spoil-rock-hunter-poster.jpg
Directed by Frank Tashlin
Produced by Frank Tashlin
Written by George Axelrod
Frank Tashlin
Starring Jayne Mansfield
Tony Randall
Music by Cyril J. Mockridge
Cinematography Joseph MacDonald
Edited by Hugh S. Fowler
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release dates
July 29, 1957 (1957-07-29)
Running time
93 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $1,050,000[1]
Box office $4,900,000[2]

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a 1957 American satirical comedy film starring Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall, with Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Lili Gentle, Mickey Hargitay, and a cameo by Groucho Marx. The film is a satire on popular fan culture, Hollywood hype and the ad industry, which was making millions of dollars off the growing revenue from television ads. The film also takes aim at television and the damage it was doing to movie attendance in the 1950s.

It was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, who also wrote the largely original screenplay, utilizing little more than the title and the character of Rita Marlowe from the successful Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by George Axelrod. The play had run from 1955 to 1956 and also starred Mansfield as Rita.

A.k.a. "Oh! For a Man!" in the UK.

Plot

Jayne Mansfield as Rita Marlowe

In lieu of a theme song and opening of the movie, Tashlin instead over laid traditional opening credits to faux television commercials for products that failed to deliver what they promise.

From this comedic segue, the film opens on a writer for television advertising, Rockwell P. Hunter (Tony Randall), who is low on the ladder at the La Salle agency, the company where he works. With the agency set to lose its biggest account – Stay-Put Lipstick – he hatches an idea to get the perfect model and spokeswoman for Stay-Put's new line of lipstick, the famous actress with the "oh-so-kissable lips", Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield).

In order for Rita to endorse the lipstick, however, Rock has to pretend to be her boyfriend to make her real boyfriend, Bobo Branigansky (Mickey Hargitay), the star of a TV Tarzan show, jealous. Bobo leaks the news of Rita's new romance to the tabloids and Rock Hunter is suddenly famous as Marlowe's "Lover Doll". Hunter's boss decides to leverage his employee's newfound fame—however when Hunter also gets Marlowe to agree on a television spectacular sponsored by Stay-Put, Hunter becomes the advertising firm's highest regarded employee. Marlowe meanwhile is miserable—she thinks she is falling in love with Hunter, but her one real true love is the man who discovered her—George Schmidlap (Groucho Marx). Not being able to find Schmidlap, she pursues Hunter, even though her Secretary "Vi" (Joan Blondell) warns her that she is playing a dangerous game. (Ironically, Blondell, who plays Mansfield's frumpy middle-aged, all-business secretary, was herself a major movie sex symbol some thirty years before—and whose sexuality was one of the first victims of the Hays Code).

Hunter soon finds fame to be a double edged sword, getting him what he wants, but with a price to be paid for that success. Women are crazy about him, and he has no peace of mind. Ultimately, he moves up the ladder at work, becoming company president, only to find it is not what he really wanted. Hunter confesses to his angry fiancée Jenny, that he finds himself at the top of the heap without any meaning and she takes him back.

As Rita Marlowe opens her television spectacular for Stay-Put Lipstick, she is surprised by the appearance of the show's "surprise" guest star of (and the first real love of her life), George Schmidlap.

Freed from strain of advertising, Rock and Jenny retire to the country to tend a chicken farm announcing that he has found the real living end.

Main cast

Actor Role
Jayne Mansfield Rita Marlowe
Tony Randall Rockwell P. Hunter
Betsy Drake Jenny Wells
Joan Blondell Violet
John Williams Irving La Salle Jr.
Henry Jones Henry Rufus
Lili Gentle April Hunter
Mickey Hargitay Bobo Branigansky
Groucho Marx George Schmidlap
Ann McCrea Gladys

Production

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? received a nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actor – Musical/Comedy (Tony Randall) and a nomination for the Writers Guild of America, East WGA Award (Screen) for Best Written American Comedy (Frank Tashlin). The character, Rita Marlowe, is based on dumb blond stereotype epitomized in the '50s by Marilyn Monroe.

In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The film contains joking references to several of Mansfield's other roles, including The Girl Can't Help It (1956; also directed by Tashlin), Kiss Them for Me (1957), and The Wayward Bus (1957). The book Mansfield reads in the bathtub scene is Peyton Place (1956) by Grace Metalious, which eventually became a feature film and a popular TV series that is claimed to be the forerunner of prime time soap operas. It has been claimed that the buxom characters in the book were inspired by Mansfield.[3]

Legacy

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is known as Mansfield's "signature film", and is in a package called "The Jayne Mansfield Collection" along with The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958).

Footnotes and references

  1. Solomon, p251
  2. Solomon, p227
  3. Emily Toth; Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious; page 144; University Press of Mississippi; 200
  • Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1.

External links