Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

good back-story, and good acting

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

"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. While none of this is particularly believable, it is fun. Here's how it happens. Randall and his boss (Henry Jones) are worried that they are about to lose one of the company's biggest clients--a cosmetics company. On a lark, Randall proposes that they get a famous movie star (Jayne Mansfield--playing a Marilyn Monroe knockoff) to endorse the cosmetics. However, Jayne's character is a bit of a self-publicizing nut and begins promoting Tony as her latest lover. With the usual media blitz following a bit star, Tony becomes all the rage--and EVERY woman seems to think he's an amazing lover. While he hates all this publicity, he cannot tell everyone the truth--or else Jayne will not sign the contract. So, until she does so, he has to pretend to be this 'Lover-Doll' and put up with the annoyance. There's a lot more to the film than this (including a clever cameo at the end) but I don't want to say more about this--it would spoil the fun.While I will admit that some of the humor is a bit broad, the film is quite fun and original. Randall is great and Mansfield is in one of her better roles. And, when it comes to spoofs about the advertising world and fame, it's very good. And, if you like it, try watching the great Doris Day/Rock Hudson film about advertising, "Lover Come Back"--it's even better.

What a neatly done job this is. 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). He's about to be furloughed from his organization and then, by accident, manages to nail the outrageous Jayne Mansfield for her endorsement of the Stay-Put Lipstick account. 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. An embarrassed Randall goes along with it. It all creates more ripples than Brittany Spears and Fed Ex or other couples of that ilk.Pretty much everything works. The director, Frank Tashlin, knew his way around a comedy, having been responsible for a number of cartoons. He recognizes a good sight gag when he sees one. 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. Randall is speaking to Mansfield's boyfriend, Bobo Branigansky, and pretending to be president of his ad agency. "Of course I'm the president -- but Miss Marlowe will be the TITULAR head of the company." Mansfield shrieks with delight, grabs Randall, and gives him an open-mouthed kiss, smothering half his face with her huge, blubbery lips. In a later scene, after having half his clothes ripped off by frenzied fans, Randall is offered a drink by the sympathetic Joan Blondell. Asked what he'd like, the morose Randall replies -- "I don't know. Make it something simple, a bottle and a straw." I don't want to give away any more of the gags, and the story isn't so convoluted that it hasn't already been limned in.Let me add, though, that it's exceptionally well acted by everyone involved. 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. How dull it could have been. Yet Jones, with his passionate, dramatic, outrageous sing-song, makes it both gripping and extremely funny.It's my understanding that the movie doesn't follow the play closely but I don't care. It has its own highly original touches. The movie is interrupted, for instance, by Randall who addresses the "TV fans in the audience" and demonstrates the failures of the luminescent orb in a way that makes us appreciate HDTV all the more. That scene couldn't have been in the play.See it if you have the chance, even if you've seen it before. It's anodyne. It will chase the blues away.

Actually, this film is a lot of fun - 50's style. But the best performance in the movie is the one by Joan Blondell as Mansfield's assistant. She has a monologue about a milkman that will leave you in tears of laughter. Don't ever forget Blondell. Mansfield is quite funny, too! She takes her fan club very seriously and that makes it all the funnier. And that poodle!!All the references to Fox movies of the day are there, plus all the digs at TV. They even add a commercial - making it very small and in black and white, fuzzy and full of snow - something the kids these days have never heard of.Tony Randall is a scream and the perfect icon of the 50's. What a pity no one ever did an in- depth biography of him - - the stories he could surely tell!!The movie is a lot of fun, especially if you remember the 50's. Hey! It really was like this, kids!

Watching this movie, I thought about the television series Seinfeld. This movie too is an offbeat version of mainstream humour and both are set in New York. More pertinently though, both rely on contemporary references to be funny. For their times, both seemed fresh and cool.Well, taken out of its 1950s period, this movie is not funny. The humour is grotesquely lame. (I have a suspicion that in 40 years, people will not find Seinfeld funny either.)Jayne Mansfield is probably more famous for her death than anything else. Tony Randall desired to be a stage actor but ultimately was successful in a TV series. If you like either, you should see this movie. Groucho Marx has a cute cameo at the end. His presence reminded me that good comedy is not dated.