Themes: Love Triangles, Work Ethics, Ladder to the Top
Main Cast: Jayne Mansfield, Tony Randall, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, Mickey Hargitay, John Williams
Release Year: 1957
Country: US
Run Time: 94 minutes
Plot
Jayne Mansfield recreated her starmaking stage role in this film adaptation of George Axelrod's Broadway comedy. Mansfield plays a Monroe-like movie queen whom adman Tony Randall hopes to sign for a product endorsement. Through a fluke, the press believes that Randall is having an affair with Mansfield; she eagerly pounces on the attendant publicity, much to the dismay of her body-builder beau (Mickey Hargitay, then married to Mansfield). At the behest of his ad agency, Randall is forced to propose to Mansfield on a coast-to-coast TV show, which breaks the heart of his true love (Betsy Drake). Both Randall and Mansfield are saved from a marriage neither one wants by the last-minute arrival of Mansfield's hometown boy friend (Groucho Marx). Director Frank Tashlin uses Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter as an excuse to take satirical potshots at everything from TV commercials to the unwieldiness of CinemaScope. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Very freely adapting George Axelrod's Broadway play, screenwriter-director (and former cartoonist) Frank Tashlin turned Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) into a riotously colorful CinemaScope pop culture satire of 1950s TV, movies, and advertising. From star Tony Randall's onscreen one-man band rendition of the 20th Century Fox theme through a brief, screen-shrinking break for commercials, Tashlin sends up both 1950s movies and their new competitor, television. As Randall's ambitious ad man Rock Hunter attempts to rope Marilyn Monroe-esque squeaky blonde starlet Jayne Mansfield (reprising her Broadway role as Rita Marlowe) into endorsing Stay-Put Lipstick, the movie pokes fun at everything from advertising, consumerism, and celebrity to overblown movie romance and the bodacious bombshell craze, not to mention the sexual mores and success mentality of 1950s America. Although Tashlin, Randall, Mansfield, and a supporting cast including Joan Blondell were in superb comic form, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? did not quite match the, well, success of its theatrical source. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Henry Jones - Rufus; Groucho Marx - Surprise Guest; Lili Gentle - April; Georgia Carr - Calypso Number; Dick Whittinghill - TV Interviewer; Ann McCrea - Gladys; Alberto Morin - Frenchman; Louis Mercier - Frenchman; Bob Adler - Mailman; Minta Durfee; Barbara Eden - Secretary; Larry Kerr - Mr. Ezzarus; Lida Piazza - Junior's Secretary; Mack Williams - Hotel Doorman; Phil Chambers - Mailman; Benny Rubin - Theater Manager
Credit
Lyle Wheeler - Art Director, Leland Fuller - Art Director, Charles LeMaire - Costume Designer, Joseph E. Richards - First Assistant Director, Frank Tashlin - Director, Hugh S. Fowler - Editor, Cyril Mockridge - Composer (Music Score), Lionel Newman - Musical Direction/Supervision, Bobby Troup - Songwriter, Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup, Joe MacDonald - Cinematographer, Frank Tashlin - Producer, Bertram Granger - Set Designer, Walter Scott - Set Designer, L.B. Abbott - Special Effects, E. Clayton Ward - Sound/Sound Designer, Frank Tashlin - Screenwriter, George Axelrod - Play Author
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 loosely based on 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".
A writer for television advertising, Rockwell P. Hunter (Randall), is low on the ladder at the company he works for. He then finds the perfect model and spokesperson for his new line of lipstick, the famous actress with the "oh-so-kissable lips", Rita Marlowe (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 (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. Women are crazy about him and he moves steadily up the ladder at work, becoming company president, only to find it is not what he really wanted.
At the behest of his agency, Rock is forced to propose to Rita on a coast-to-coast TV show, which breaks the heart of his fiancée, Jenny Wells (Drake), who is not too pleased, but she takes him back in the end. Both Rock and Rita are saved from a marriage neither one wants by the last-minute arrival of Rita's hometown boyfriend, George Schmidlap (Marx).
There's a reference to this film in the 1964 spy novel Funeral in Berlin, starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. When the secret agent Palmer character, gets forged papers with a new identity, he gets unsatisfied with the name given to him and complains, "Rock Hunter! Why can't I be Rock Hunter?"
The book Jayne Mansfield reads in the bathtub scene is Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, which eventually became a feature film and a popular TV series that is claimed to be the forerunner of prime timesoap operas. It has been claimed that the buxom characters in the book were inspired by Mansfield.[1]
