Short answer: yes.
I suspect the general impression most people have of the 1950’s America is it was hopelessly naïve. Although I wasn’t there to experience it myself, I know there had to be a lot more going on with most people than obsessively looking out for an imagined communist menace while cruising in a monstrous car, sipping on a malted at the soda shop or watching a movie at the drive-in.
Looking at some of the studio releases of 1957, however, shows signs of the coming cynicism of the next decade. That year saw the release of such pictures as Sweet Smell of Success, A Face In the Crowd and 12 Angry Men. In a similar, but more lighthearted vein, is Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Tony Randall stars as an advertising man, one of seemingly four or five non-executive jobs it seems a man in the movies of the late 50’s and early 60’s could have. If movies are to be believed, half of adult men were architects or working in advertising. The rest were in the armed forces or were commercial airline pilots, if I recall correctly.
The big client (only client?) for Randall’s firm is Stay-Put Lipstick. This account is going to move to another firm if he can’t come up with a stellar campaign. The revolutionary idea he comes up with is to hire the most famous actress in the world (Jayne Mansfield) to be their spokesperson. Yep—that’s his whole idea, and everybody thinks he’s brilliant for coming up with it. Never mind how they are going to convince her to work for them.
I’m indifferent towards Mansfield, but this is good role for her. In a lesser film, her character would have been a brainless bimbo. Here, she is quite savvy about how to manipulate the media to her advantage. Some of the movie’s satirical points along these lines could be applied to today’s culture of media influencers. Still, Mansfield tends to say things incorrectly, and often humorously, such as this statement about men: “I can pick them up and I can pick them down.”
Mansfield just happens to have fled Hollywood for New York City to try to make her himbo of a boyfriend jealous (Mickey Hargitay—yep, the father of Law & Order: SVU’s Mariska Hargitay, whose mom is Mansfield, by the way). In her hotel room, she’s on the phone with Hargitay, teasing him about another man in her life, though one doesn’t exist in reality.
Fortune smiles on Randall when he goes to that hotel room to propose his sponsor offer to Mansfield. She has a whole other kind of proposal in mind after she gets him on the phone to play the role of her new boyfriend. Having successfully made Hargitay jealous, Mansfield also manages to whip up a media frenzy with the announcement of her new romance. As thanks, she agrees to be the spokesperson for Stay-Put.
The media manipulation aspect of this picture strongly resonates today, what with this being the age of the social media influencers. Similarly, there is much that is still relevant in the skewering of the advertising industry. Even meaningless industry double-speak is mocked as Henry Jones, playing Randall’s boss, blathers such inanities as the spokesperson idea being “The greatest thing since chlorophyll”.
This is about the thousandth film I have seen where I wanted to spend more time with minor characters like Jones than with the stars. Betsy Drake left quite an impression as Randall’s long-suffering secretary and girlfriend (a fairly typical arrangement in 1950’s films). Joan Blondell steals every scene she’s in as Mansfield’s secretary and all-around right-hand woman. She has an especially great spiel about a milkman who is the great lost love of her life. In her grief, she follows this up with a interesting bit where she starts to pour a shot of booze and a tall glass of seltzer, but some complicated maneuvering leads to her downing a tall glass of booze and a shot of seltzer.
But the centerpiece of the picture is a moment of physical comedy where Mansfield puts Randall in one of Hargitay’s suit jackets, in addition to lifts to make him taller. The result is Randall looks more than a bit like David Byrne in the famous big suit, as he stomps around like a cross between a giant toddler and Frankenstein. The punchline arrives when he goes to Drake’s apartment like this and finds her in the dark, face and palms down on the floor and elbows in the air. Turns out she fell asleep while doing push-ups. Randall struggles to put her to bed (as he continues to struggle with his bizarre costuming). Soon lying on her back in bed, her hands and arms are still locked in place like she’s doing “jazz hands”.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is gently subversive, even from the opening credits, where Randall accompanies the 20th Century Fox logo to say he is contractually obligated to do so. The credits then play out over parodies of advertisements of various product types. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie, a light comedy that throws some gentle stabs at aspects of fame and advertising that are still relevant today.
Dir: Frank Tashlin
Starring: Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake
Watched on Twilight Time blu-ray