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, and Mickey Hargitay, and with a cameo by Groucho Marx. The film is a satire on popular fan culture, Hollywood hype, and the advertising industry, which was profiting from commercials on the relatively new medium of television. It also takes aim at the reduction television caused to the size of movie theater audiences in the 1950s. The film was known as Oh! For a Man! in the United Kingdom.
The film was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, who also wrote the largely original screenplay, using 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 Jayne Mansfield as Rita.
Plot
In lieu of a theme song and opening of the movie, Tashlin instead laid traditional opening credits over faux television commercials for products that failed to deliver what they promised.
The film opens on a writer, Rockwell P. Hunter, who is low on the ladder at the La Salle advertising agency. With the agency set to lose its biggest accountStay-Put Lipstickhe 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. Fortunately, his teenage niece April - a huge fan of Rita - knows where Rita is staying in New York.
For Rita to endorse the lipstick, however, Rock has to pretend to be her boyfriend to make her real boyfriend, Bobo Branigansky, the star of The Jungle Man TV show, jealous. Bobo leaks the news of Rita's new romance in a TV interview and Rock is suddenly famous as her "Lover Doll". Rock's boss decides to leverage his employee's newfound fame, but when Rock gets Rita to agree on a television spectacular sponsored by Stay-Put, Rock becomes the advertising firm's highest-regarded employee. The two agree to continue this mutually beneficial relationship, garnering media attention for Rita and business for Rock. Rita, meanwhile, is miserable; she thinks she is falling in love with Rock, but her one real true love is the man who discovered her, George Schmidlap. Not being able to find Schmidlap, she pursues Rock, though her secretary Vi warns her that she is playing a dangerous game. (Ironically, Joan Blondell, who plays Mansfield's frumpy, middle-aged, all-business secretary, was herself a major movie sex symbol some 30 years before, and her sexuality was an early target of the Hays Code). Meanwhile, his angry fiancée Jenny is jealous, and in a bid to get back his attention, starts dressing and talking like Rita (much to Rock's frustration).
The film includes a comedic intermission, which Rock says is for the audience used to television breaks.
Rock 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. Rock confesses to Jenny that he finds himself at the top of the heap without any meaning and she takes him back.
As Rita opens her television spectacular for Stay-Put Lipstick, she is surprised by the appearance of the show's "surprise" guest star of (and the one true love of her life), George Schmidlap. The two kiss and reunite.
Freed from the 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
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 the dumb blonde stereotype epitomized by roles performed by Marilyn Monroe at the time. Initially, Tashlin envisioned Ed Sullivan for the role of Rockwell P. Hunter. Sullivan turned it down, so Tony Randall was awarded the part.
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 became a feature film and a popular TV series. The buxom characters in the book were claimed to have been inspired by Mansfield.