The Girl Can't Help It

This movie is a treasure and should be viewed by all serious movie fans, because there is nothing quite like it. Mansfield is perfection, Tom Ewell is his dependable funny self, plus all that music! I love Julie London's "Cry Me A River" the best. In any event, see this movie, even if the music is older than you are!

Anyone curious about the lighter side of the Eisenhower years needs to catch this candy-box confection. Yes indeed, it's classic R&R with a number of star crowd-pleasers at their peak—The Platters, Gene Vincent & His Bluecaps, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, plus the one and only Little Richard. And for the lounge lizard crowd, it's a sultry Julie London crying her trademark river. And, of course, no 50's look-back is complete without a busty blonde. Here it's a cartoonish Jayne Mansfield defying the laws of gravity with her twin gunboats.

And it's all put together by sight gag specialist Frank Tashlin showing why his years as a Disney cartoonist were not misspent. Okay, the 100-minutes gets a little plot-heavy toward the end, plus watching the glamorous Mansfield get all ga-ga over a nerdy Tom Ewell is itself a cartoon. Still, there's a usually dour Eddie O'Brien mugging it up in hilarious fashion, along with a deliciously deadpan Henry Jones trailing behind. I can't believe TCM gave the results only an average rating. Someone over there was asleep. On the contrary, this is one of the most lively and entertaining documents from that cold war decade. Thank you, Frank Tashlin and Twentieth Century Fox.

"The Girl Can't Help It" is a '50s comedy that is also a showcase for some of the rock 'n' roll acts of the day, including Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Platters, Gene Vincent, The Treniers, and many others.

Tom Ewell plays a down and out agent, Tom Miller, hired by gangster Fats Murdock (Edmond O'Brien) to make his girlfriend, Jerri Jordan, (Jayne Mansfield) a star. Turns out Jerri feels gratitude to Fats for helping her father, but she isn't in love with him; she doesn't want to be in show business, preferring domestic things like cooking; and she appears to have no talent. She looks great, though, and in some form-fitting gowns, she draws plenty of attention, and all the clubs want to book her. Concerned because she's tone-deaf, Miller has one of the songs Fats wrote in prison (the one in the subject is but one title) "Rock Around the Rock Pile" adapted into a novelty number so that all Jerri has to do is a high pitched sound. The song is an immediate smash. Miller, however, who was jilted by his client Julie London, now finds he and Jerri have fallen for one another. But Fats is still around.

This is a very, very funny send-up of rock 'n' roll and show business, with a marvelously deadpan performance by Tom Ewell, to whom the singing Julie London, in various costumes, is always appearing while singing "Cry Me a River" - on the staircase, in the bedroom, in a bar - a great bit. O'Brien, who performs his "Jailhouse Rock" mockery at the end of the movie, is hilarious.

The real star is the flashy Jayne Mansfield, who underneath that va-va-va-voom figure, blonder than blond hair and huge chest was a beautiful woman and a good actress. Mansfield, probably hired by Fox as a threat to Monroe, figured out early on that making fun of the bombshell image was her best bet. She had a lovely speaking voice and, in serious moments, a natural way of acting. She also radiated warmth. This film and "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter," which she did on Broadway as well, are good testaments to her work.

Lots of fun.

I saw this film when it was released in 1956. It was the first production for mainstream audiences to feature top R&B and R&R acts in color. My contemporaries were particularly delighted to see Little Richard, Fats Domino and The Platters on screen in color for the first time. I made a VHS copy from a cable TV screening, but later purchased a legal VHS release, only to find that the cable screening used a better copy, both audio and video wise.

The only complaint I have about the film is that every one of the musical acts is interrupted by dialog.

Despite that, especially for nostalgia buffs, it's still well-worth getting.

...with some rock n' roll thrown in for good measure. Tom Ewell does his exact same performance from The Seven Year Itch with Edmond O'Brian doing a Broderick Crawford impression, I liked that Jayne- who was obviously intended to be a foil for Monroe at her home studio of Fox - didn't try to act like Marilyn.

She came across as very natural and her "own self"- someone secure with who she was. There was a scene where she had to break down in tears and, well, I bought it.

However, the real star of the film was the music- from the awesome title track by Little Richard to Ray Anthony to Gene Vincent to a strange meta-cameo by Julie London (I had forgotten what a wonderful voice she had).