Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Man, oh man, oh Mansfield!

To save his career, an ad man wants a sex symbol to endorse a lipstick but in exchange, she wants him to pretend to be her lover.

Date of release
1957-07-29
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (80)
Runtime
1h 33m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Frank Tashlin

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $1M

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.

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). Initially, Tashlin envisioned Ed Sullivan for the role of Rockwell P. Hunter. Sullivan turned it down, so Tony Randall was awarded the part.

George Axelrod sold the rights to his play to Buddy Adler at Fox, which had just made Bus Stop, based on a script by Axelrod. The writer said "They didn't use my story, my play, or my script... I made it about the movies—they made it about television."

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 Rita Marlowe 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.

Former silent film star Minta Durfee has an uncredited role as a scrubwoman.

Randall is featured at the beginning of the film playing the drums, a trumpet, and a cello during the 20th Century-Fox logo and fanfare sequence. At the end, he remarks, "Oh, the fine print they put in an actor's contract these days!" He also performs a comedic intermission midway through the film, which he says is for the audience used to television break.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended