Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Film: Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)
Stars: Jayne Mansfield, Tony Randall, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell
Director: Frank Tashlin
Oscar History: No nominations, though Randall was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Jayne Mansfield-click here to learn more about Ms. Mansfield (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we start our month with Jayne Mansfield, I'm going to do something I don't normally do in "Saturdays with the Stars," and certainly have not done yet this year.  We are going to go slightly out of chronological order with her films (we'll go with a different film from earlier in 1957 next week).  This is both because we aren't (for reasons you'll see when you catch the four films that I picked for Mansfield) going to watch her cinematic big break, The Girl Can't Help It (for which she won a Golden Globe), and because Jayne Mansfield's time in the spotlight was incredibly short.  More than pretty much any other actress we've profiled (even Ruth Roman last year), Mansfield really was only a star for a couple of years, in many ways not equalling the stars of her era, but more in-line with sex symbols of the 1970's & 80's like Bo Derek & Kelly LeBrock, who only lit up for a year or two before receding.  This was in part because by the time Mansfield had come around, it was obvious who the next big "sex symbol star" after Marilyn would be, and it wouldn't be a busty blonde-it would be a brunette, one whose career in movies preceded Monroe's: Elizabeth Taylor.  Mansfield's best chance at sustained stardom, and what made it seem like she might be able to equal Marilyn was the film we're discussing today, which launched her career on Broadway, and then became a smash hit: Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film isn't necessarily centered on Mansfield's Rita Marlowe despite her billing, but instead on Tony Randall's Rock Hunter.  Rock is a normal guy, working as an average Joe at an advertising firm, where he's certain he'll soon marry his secretary Jenny (Drake) and start a family.  When he finds out he is about to lose his contract with a makeup company, Rock panics, and decides to make a pitch to film star Rita Marlowe, known as the "girl with the kissable lips."  Marlowe is trying to make her ex-boyfriend, the bodybuilding Bobo (played by Mickey Hargitay, who would soon be Mansfield's husband), jealous, and so she pretends to have a relationship with Rock, whose world is suddenly turned upside-down by fame and success (he gets promoted, as one does when they date the most famous woman in the world).  The film ends with Rock & Jenny reuniting, and setting up Rita with her long lost love, George Schmidlap (Groucho Marx in an awesome cameo).

The film is famous for its skewering of advertising, and in particular television.  There is an extended opening with Randall mocking the TV industry through a series of jabs, and another that happens midway into the movie(so that audiences won't be disturbed by not having a "commercial").  Combined with the many lampoons that Mansfield gets in (both an obvious Marilyn Monroe impression, and within the movie, she also gets a number of references to other Jayne Mansfield pictures), the movie's quite funny.  Joan Blondell is a riot as Mansfield's assistant, and while occasionally it strains credulity, it's a solid script and there's a lot of humor in it.  It's kind of stupid humor, but I liked it-not everything has to be Shakespeare, and this is delicious cotton candy.

Mansfield's also very good in the central role.  We're going to get to Mansfield in a couple of different  types of the same role, but this one is her best version.  That's because the actress that Mansfield is playing is the sort of "smart blonde" prototype that Mansfield (who was a child prodigy, and had a supposedly genius IQ) could sell with aplomb.  Mansfield's Rita is supposed to parody Marilyn, but it more parodies Marilyn's public persona-a woman who knows how to manipulate the press & every man in her path-rather than the private Marilyn, or even the private Jayne (a much more traditional woman who would soon be married with a number of children).  This works-Rita is clever, steals every scene she's in, and makes the movie her own.  Mansfield's stardom may have fallen fast, but she came by it honestly.