Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Plot synopsis:
Fan magazine writer George MacCauley visits Hollywood's reigning sex goddess Rita Marlowe in her swank New York hotel and confesses that this is only his second interview, the first having been titled 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?' Arriving moments later is the hottest new playwright in town, Michael Freeman (author of 'No Hiding Place Down Here'), quickly followed by literary agent Irving 'Sneaky' LaSalle (inspired by real-life agent Irving 'Swifty' Lazar) and Hollywood mogul Harry Kaye, who is apoplectic about having paid $350,000 for the rights to Mike's play. LaSalle tries to convince the playwright to sign with his agency and write a second play, but Mike is reluctant to write what might be a flop. George, left alone with LaSalle, is persuaded to sign up instead. LaSalle's fee for each of his services is the usual ten per cent, but what George doesn't realise is that he'll be selling off pieces of his soul in ever-increasing increments. George's first wish is for a million dollars; he gets it. Then, when he fantasises about having a woman like Rita Marlowe love him, the suddenly love-struck Rita re-enters and Act One ends with George carrying her into the bedroom.
In Act Two, the scene shifts to the Hollywood office of Rita Marlowe Productions, where Mike flirts with Rita's pert secretary, Miss Logan. George has learned that Rita's not-yet-divorced husband, football star Bronk Brannigan, is none too happy about her new relationship. Worse, George has been engaged to write his first screenplay, an adaptation of Mike's psychological drama about a prostitute and a psychiatrist, and after four weeks he still has no idea how to go about it. With an all-important story conference due any minute, LaSalle increases his hold on George by giving him the requisite 'inspiration' to satisfy the increasingly impatient Harry.
In Act Three, a year has gone by and George has won an Oscar. When Bronk shows up and begins to pummel George, LaSalle (exacting another ten per cent) enables George to get the better of Bronk; in fact, George tosses the astonished athlete through a window in a shower of broken glass. Soon afterwards, however, George decides he must get out of town before LaSalle takes complete control of him on reaching the full 100 per cent. His penultimate wish is to give Mike a ready-made Pulitzer Prize-winning play, but Mike suddenly realises that he could never pass off as his own a play he didn't write. When LaSalle reappears, George selflessly releases Rita from his control and Mike convinces LaSalle to take him on as a client instead, even agreeing to start with the 90 per cent share already pledged. When LaSalle grabs the offer, Mike explains that it was a bad trade, because he's completely happy with his life and has no intention of selling off the remaining ten per cent. LaSalle petulantly grabs George's Oscar and departs. As the play ends, Mike and George are on their way back to New York, Mike not forgetting to grab his typewriter on the way out.

Tags: satire

Review:
But the best performance in the movie is the one by Joan Blondell as Mansfield's assistant.
is the glorious summit of what had to have been a frustrating career, the one time he was matched with a writer (Geo Axelrod) and cast (led by Tony Randall & Jayne Mansfield) perfectly in sync with his playfully outre satiric sensibility.
The end result will make you wish lightning had struck more often like this for Tashlin; ROCK HUNTER may be the most beautifully 'opened-up' stage property in film history.
Best of all, its satiric barbs (aimed at both television and the gray-flanneled Organization Man) hit their targets consistently while never superceding the character-driven heart of the story: Randall is simply terrific here, and his wobbly tightwalk between schnook and lothario is hilarious.
"Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" stars Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Joan Blondell, Henry Jones, Betsy Drake, John Williams, and Mickey Hargitay in a dated but fun story that spoofs the advertising world and the movies' arch enemy, television.
In fact, Tony Randall breaks the fourth wall for a "commercial" during one part of the film, extolling the virtues of that "big, 21-inch screen" as the little screen's picture has problems with its vertical.The story concerns an ad exec trying to get a movie star to endorse a lipstick - in return, she wants him to pose as her new boyfriend.The performances are uniformly wonderful - Randall is hilarious as a man trying to hold onto his job, and then onto his girlfriend.
She can't get over her milkman boyfriend, stating that loses it whenever she sees Half & Half.But the movie belongs to Jayne Mansfield and her tongue in cheek sex bomb image - she's so blonde, so zaftig, so breathless, and so darn funny with her squeals of delight and outrageous wardrobe.
Tony Randall stars as Rockwell Hunter, a writer for television advertisements.
By a couple of coincidences, he finds out where Hollywood starlette, Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield), is hiding out in New York and thinks he can convince her to endorse a certain kind of lipstick.
At the halfway point of Rock Hunter, Tony Randall pops out from behind a curtain to address those in the audience who are more the type to watch television than go to the movies.
I would never have imagined that Tony Randall could carry a movie, especially playing an everyman (I always think of him as a prissy, refined gentleman), but he does a great job.
Advertising man makes publicity deal with voluptuous Hollywood star.Hilarious spoof of the mammary-worshipping 1950's.
Director Tashlin's satiric eye is penetrating and years ahead, as the 1960's-like ending suggests.That spoof of TV advertising is especially funny and still timely.
(Catch the rather humorous shot of her coming rump-first out of the sleeping berth, which seems Tashlin's style, even with minor details.) Looks like someone also threw her the big dramatic grieving scene, maybe out of respect for her veteran status.Anyway, the movie's a delightful glimpse of that strait-jacketed decade's more vulnerable absurdities, and in Technicolor's brightest candy box colors.
A lot of rather innovative techniques, such as the opening credit sequence, with Tony Randall introducing the film, followed by dead-on spoofs of commercials,  and the very subtle use of transitioning to a blue or yellow screen before moving on to the next scene.
For sheer vulgarity I have NEVER heard such Farrelly-esquire risqué rudeness in a 50s or even 60s film: Joan Blondell says whilst making a cocktail: "I had a boyfriend once, he was a milkman, I used to get a lump at the back of my throat when I knew he was coming.
Jayne Mansfield shines as the larger-than-life comic relief, Tony Randall is Tashlin's troubled alter ego, torn between corporate "success" and personal satisfaction, Henry Jones is his tragic, pill-popping, excessively phlegmatic executive co-worker , Joan Blondell a washed-up, lovelorn, milk-obsessed (!) variation on the Mansfield-type.
Tony Randall is a hoot as the suddenly fish out of water main character and Jayne Mansfield, repeating her stage triumph, is a knockout and proves an adapt comedienne.
"Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" is a film that stars Tony Randall as a small-time advertising executive that somehow becomes a world-wide sensation.
On a lark, Randall proposes that they get a famous movie star (Jayne Mansfield--playing a Marilyn Monroe knockoff) to endorse the cosmetics.
And, if you like it, try watching the great Doris Day/Rock Hudson film about advertising, "Lover Come Back"--it's even better..
A lightweight comedy famous as Mansfield's next big film after 'The Girl Can't Help It'.
As with the earlier film, this was produced by Frank Tashlin and unashamedly satirists Jayne's public persona: a busty star of little apparent talent who will do anything for publicity.
This time around Jayne plays Rita Marlowe who teams with advertising exec Rock Hunter (Tony Randall) for mutual gain.
John Williams of Hitchcock's 'To Catch a Thief' and 'Dial 'M' For Murder' is in the cast, and Henry Jones, the supercilious coroner in 'Vertigo', is also quite good as Randall's boss.A film that would have benefited from a bit of judicious cutting to speed up the leisurely pace, and a little bit more of Jayne.
No one else in the universe could do the things Jayne Mansfield gets away with; Tony Randall is great, so is Joan Blondell and Henry Jones.
Joan Blondell is hilarious and steals the show whenever she's on screen, and obviously Jayne Mansfield is a screen presence to be reckoned with, and she nails her role here and is a real pleasure to watch.
Tony Randall spoils it a little - he's just good enough to be passable as a dull straight man, but he's far more wooden and dull than the role calls for, and he did better before and after, most notably in TV's The Odd Couple.
is worth keeping if only because Jayne Mansfield films are so precious few, and it still has the slightly campy fun of a 50's comedy, but it isn't a classic worth lingering on..
Randall has no chemistry with his best girl and it's hard to buy that angle, but for a spoof movie, you can overlook stuff like that.
Director Frank Tashlin stretches his anything-for-a-laugh method of comic film-making to the breaking point with this very weak advertising send-up (with equally dull romantic-confusion underpinnings).
It's a super-dated fluff story about an ambitious advertising man named Rock Hunter (Tony Randall) who finds a way to climb the corporate ladder with the help of a bleach-blonde bimbo with big lips named Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield).
Joan Blondell and a few funny lines save this antique from being a total cinematic misdemeanor.Apparently aimed at an audience of giggly 16-year-old females, this popcorn and candy flick is pure diversionary fluff, and embarrassingly dated, a time capsule of horrid mainstream American pop culture during the stodgy Eisenhower era.
Ad man Tony Randall manages to get a big sex symbol Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) to push a lipstick...but things get out of hand.
I am never more jealous of anyone than I am at two points during this movie; first, of Joan Blondell, as she massages those tender feet and those oh-so-shapely calves while Jayne's Rita Marlowe lies and squirms and rolls on the massage table teasing her boyfriend over the phone.
"Not a single kopeck." But wait -- if Rock can come up with something to save the account, he might save the day -- or, as Rufus says, "Your problem could be solvey-solvey!" Rock decides to ask the famous movie star Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) to endorse the product.
she's known for her 'oh-so-kissable lips'!"Through a series of misadventures involving his niece, a dozen martinis, and a late-arriving bellboy, Rock manages to secure Rita's endorsement of the lipstick -- on the condition that he pretends for awhile to be her boyfriend, both to make her current boyfriend jealous and to secure free publicity for her upcoming movie -- "A Russian drama about two Russian brothers".
This movie is riveting because of the performances (in addition to the rest of the cast, Joan Blondell is hysterical as Vi, Rita's personal assistant) and the script.
Trumpet,oboe, bassoon...brass and woodwinds, mostly." Tony Randall is at his dithery best, and Jayne Mansfield is wonderfully over the top.
While Marilyn Monroe was her contemporary, after watching this movie it makes me wonder if all the characteristics that Monroe was noted for (breathless delivery) was really Mansfield's creation than Monroe's.
In this movie, Rock Hunter (Tony Randall) works for a Madison Avenue advertising agency with working pal, Henry Rufus (Henry Jones).
However, Hunter's niece, April (Lili Gentle), is a huge fan of Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) who is coming into NYC with her traveling companion, Violet (Joan Blondell).
One of the best and funniest satires that the movies ever had and really pushed the Code envelope is Frank Tashlin's Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter.
For a biting look at America during the Eisenhower era, you can't go wrong looking at this very funny film.The title role is played by Tony Randall who in his effort to sew up a lipstick account with an endorsement from a Marilyn Monroe type film star gets himself innocently involved with her.
And who would not want to be even innocently involved with Jayne Mansfield?Perhaps the biggest satire of the film is that of Monroe.
No doubt that Monroe had she still been with the studio would have done this film, but Jayne has a dead-on impersonation of Monroe and why not since she was being groomed as the next one.Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter takes dead aim on Americana of the era.
As Randall becomes an icon himself as Mansfield's "Lover Doll" Henry Jones tells him what has talent got to do with being a success?
That image of Tony Randall walking oblivious to all in traffic from the Knickerocker Hotel after his first encounter with Jayne Mansfield will stay with you forever.
In the wake of Monroe's success, Hollywood teemed with imitations This, in itself, was not an unusual phenomenon; what was extraordinary was the number of imitations Not only every studio but also every country came up with one England had Sabrina and Diana Dors; France sold Mylene Demongeot in that image and, of course, Bardot Germany came out with a series of teutonic, pneumatic blondes like Barbara Valentine Back in Hollywood, Universal came up with the clone-like Mamie Van Doren, Columbia with Cleo Moore, Warner Brothers with Carole Baker, Paramount with Anita Ekberg, MGM tried with Barbara Lang, and on and on ran the list of actresses who found themselves poured into the mold Even Sophia Loren and Tina Louise were, in a manner of speaking, off-shoots of the 'steamy' Marilyn in "Niagara." No single studio was as determined to increase replicas as Monroe's own lot, 20th Century-Fox, who found the most extravagant pretender in Jayne Mansfield Although none of the Monroe copies can be said to have made it in that guise, none tried harder (right up to her sudden death in a car crash) than Mansfield Mansfield worked in a succession of busty bits at various studios, it was the Monroe phenomenon which changed her from brunette to blonde, and made her play down her high IQ to dumb-blonde level Her breakthrough came with the 'Monroe'inspired role of the blonde sex-bomb in Broadway's "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" The display of her physical wares represented a personal triumph which led her back to Hollywood in 1956 where she became a star for Fox, who were looking to curb Monroe's power.
Tony Randall is Rock Hunter, a minor functionary at a Madison Avenue advertising agency (this is a 1950s comedy and Mad Ave was the target of many jokes).
Jayne doesn't care about the account but she wants to make her boyfriend back in Hollywood jealous so she pretends to be Randall's sex slave.
Watch the door open and the diminutive Tony Randall appear, back lighted, dressed in the over-sized suit of a muscle man, and wearing elevator shoes, staggering around like Frankenstein's monster.He knows his hilarious dialog too.
Note, in particular, one long speech done in a single take with Henry Jones, as he explains to Tony Randall that success is nothing more than being in the right place at the right time.
Advertising ideas man Tony Randall hits the jackpot with his latest ruse - now he just needs to convince pouty, bleached-blonde movie megastar Jayne Mansfield to use Stay Put lipstick on those "oh so kissable lips".
Director Tashlin - a former animator who brought a uniquely cartoonish sensibility to films like Son of Paleface and The Girl Can't Help It and was a major influence on Joe Dante - chucked out almost all of George Axelrod's source play (a satire on the movie business) and replaced it with an exhilarating script that speaks its own language and takes aim at anything he fancies, starting with celebrity, corporations, conformity, marketing, materialism, Hollywood producers, TV and radio.
Randall is excellent as the overnight success story wrestling variously with a tabloid nickname ("lover doll"), an over-sized suit and the attentions of dozens of teenage girls, and there are two exceptional performances in support: a deliciously mannered turn from Henry Jones as a superficial executive with his own theory on success, and Joan Blondell giving a masterclass in old-style movie acting as Mansfield's world-weary secretary.
Given that shift, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" still comes over as very, very funny.
It seems likely that Frank Tashlin, the writer, performed the same service for Jayne Mansfield, for she is likewise inspired.
In this latter function, Tashlin has inventively filled the wide expanses of his CinemaScope screen not only with pleasing players (including Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams and Miss Mansfield's real-life husband, Mickey Hargitay), but deft visual and aural effects.
Tony Randall scores his greatest role as Rock Hunter, a staid advertising executive looking for the perfect image for a lipstick advertisement.
Discovering that his niece is obsessed with movie star Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield), he decides to get her to endorse the lipstick, hoping that it will get him in good with the stuffy head of the company, John Williams, who snubs him, bringing out the beast in thus mild mannered milquetoast.
This is ultra upsetting to Randall's secretary/fiancée Betsy Drake and makes Randall's immediate supervisor (Henry Jones) wonder what Randall puts in his wheat germ to look like he does and all of a sudden become "lover boy", the sought after target of a group of determined fan girls.Ironically spoofing his friend Rock Hudson, Randall is both nebbish and sensual as the publicity turns him into somebody even he doesn't know.
Wearing little, sexy Mickey Hargitay is funny as a Tarzan style actor, complete with leading lady chimp, whom Mansfield insists he smelled like when he came to pick her up for their dates.Henry Jones also scores laughs as the dipsomaniac boss, creating guffaws by just pouring a morning martini, sending his daughter off to therapy and later, romancing Blondell.
While this might be considered a period piece as far as advertising industry is concerned today (as well as publicity for modern movie stars) it is one of the classic comedies of the 1950's.
I can imagine the laughs that Mansfield must have gotten on Broadway, but like her first movie lead, you must admit, the girl can't help it..
It doesn't take long to realize Jayne Mansfield is doing Marilyn Monroe in the picture, it happens with her very first squeal of delight.
It really does feel like a live-action adaptation of a cartoon Tashlin had stuck in his head.Sadly several aspects grated my nerves, I know Jayne Mansfield was playing the same irritating satirical embodiment of '50s film stardom as she did in The Girl Can't Help It, it does not make it any less horrible to listen to.
Tashlin tries to overcome this with including crude humour, which is very dated with all its sexist under- and overtones.In conclusion, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
The film combines witty jabs at the world of advertising with a biting satire about the cult of Hollywood celebrity, as exemplified by Jayne Mansfield's character, Rita Marlowe.
Tony Randall is cast as an ad man and her unlikely love interest.One can see Mansfield's inimitable talent in this film.
There is also a funny press conference outside the home of an advertising executive.Joan Blondell is cast as Mansfield's chaperone, while Betsy Drake (wife of Cary Grant) plays Randall's long-suffering girl Friday.
In fact, Mr. Grant is mentioned when the Rita Marlowe character says she (meaning Mansfield herself) will soon be appearing with him in her next film.The picture is thoroughly enjoyable, and part of its appeal seems to be its commentary about getting ahead.
First, let me mention a spoiler: Groucho Marx appears with Jayne Mansfield at the end as someone she used to know and was very much in love with.
Frank Tashlin has made one of the most satirical comedies of the '50s that makes great fun of television and the advertising industry.
Tony Randall is great in the title role and Ms. Mansfield oozes both sexuality and humor in her over-the-top role.
Watch Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
While Tashlin did a great job "opening" it up, the tone was uneven and Rita Marlowe had me scratching my head.She is this Sex Bomb who turns men into jelly with her oh-so kissable lips, but her fans are teenage girls!
*. Absolutely ridiculous 1957 film where the glib advertiser, Tony Randall, suddenly becomes a great success at the advertising firm he works for by getting Jayne Mansfield to endorse a certain lipstick.It's basically the same old story that success in life isn't everything, especially when it interferes with the relationship of his true love.Other than being a sex object, Mansfield does little to nothing.