La blonde explosive

A lightweight comedy famous as Mansfield's next big film after 'The Girl Can't Help It'. This was again produced by Frank Tashlin and satirises Jayne's public persona: a busty star of little apparent talent who will do anything for publicity.

Here Jayne plays Rita Marlowe who teams with advertising exec Rock Hunter (Tony Randall) for mutual gain. The film seems wordy at times. It mixes send-ups of the Hollywood publicity machine, the climb up the corporate ladder, and the introduction of television though the anti-TV jokes seem dated.

But anyone watching will be watching for Jayne and she's great. All her too-brief scenes are funny and she plays well with Joan Blondell, who is excellent as Rita's wise companion-assistant. Other enjoyable performers in the cast are John Williams of Hitchcock's 'To Catch a Thief' and 'Dial 'M' For Murder', and Henry Jones, the supercilious coroner in 'Vertigo'.

Occasionally biting, sometimes off the mark with cornball sight gags, but solid for the most part. You can see Tashlin's cartoon background with some of the visual gags and sound/sight cues, but there's just a distance here that doesn't really work. Randall has no chemistry with his best girl and it's hard to buy that angle, but for a spoof movie, you can overlook stuff like that. Overall it's pretty funny, dated in parts for sure, but still watchable.

Frothy, fun comedy with some smart jabs at advertising and fan worship. Tony Randall is a hoot as the suddenly fish out of water main character and Jayne Mansfield, repeating her stage triumph, is a knockout and proves an adapt comedienne. She's no Marilyn Monroe but had she had more roles like this her career at the top might not have been so short.

While Tony and Jayne do most of the heavy lifting script wise the main supporting cast adds a great deal to the picture. Joan Blondell scores strongly as Jayne's right hand woman. An actress of wonderful subtlety she makes what could have been a nothing role both humorous and touching at times. Henry Jones and John Williams both add sly portrayals of two different kinds of successful men, one who wants to climb higher and the other who never wanted to be there in the first place. The weakest link is Betsy Drake as Rock's true love, the part doesn't offer much but unlike Blondell she doesn't have the distinction to make more of it than what's on the page. She doesn't mar the film she's just sort of there and when she's off screen you forget about her.

The picture has that high gloss studio sheen and gorgeous saturated color that was a signature of the A pictures of that time. A winner and a great showcase for its stars.

"Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" stars Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Joan Blondell, Henry Jones, Betsy Drake, John Williams, and Mickey Hargitay in a dated but fun story that spoofs the advertising world and the movies' arch enemy, television. In fact, Tony Randall breaks the fourth wall for a "commercial" during one part of the film, extolling the virtues of that "big, 21-inch screen" as the little screen's picture has problems with its vertical.

The story concerns an ad exec trying to get a movie star to endorse a lipstick - in return, she wants him to pose as her new boyfriend.

The performances are uniformly wonderful - Randall is hilarious as a man trying to hold onto his job, and then onto his girlfriend. Joan Blondell is fabulous as Jayne Mansfield's assistant. She can't get over her milkman boyfriend, stating that loses it whenever she sees Half & Half.

But the movie belongs to Jayne Mansfield and her tongue in cheek sex bomb image - she's so blonde, so zaftig, so breathless, and so darn funny with her squeals of delight and outrageous wardrobe. When you look beyond all Jayne's muchness, you see a beautiful, smart woman who found a great niche for herself. It's a pity that the last part of her life was so sad. What a delightful, refreshing performer she was. This film and "The Girl Can't Help It" are for me her best, though she made several other films that showcased her comedic ability.

Very good movie, highly entertaining.

This piece of satire from 1957 was probably considered edgy and sharp back then, but it really didn't age too well, and there isn't much else about it to make it stand on its own legs as a classic. The witty send-ups of television, the advertising industry and celebrity culture seems tame and mellow now that real celebrity culture is so much more extreme than anybody in the 50's might have guessed, and reality had surpassed any possible satire. The film is still watchable, even entertaining - the script is solid and smart and has more double entendres than most writers back then and which probably should have never received the Hays code's approval. Joan Blondell is hilarious and steals the show whenever she's on screen, and obviously Jayne Mansfield is a screen presence to be reckoned with, and she nails her role here and is a real pleasure to watch. Tony Randall spoils it a little - he's just good enough to be passable as a dull straight man, but he's far more wooden and dull than the role calls for, and he did better before and after, most notably in TV's The Odd Couple. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is worth keeping if only because Jayne Mansfield films are so precious few, and it still has the slightly campy fun of a 50's comedy, but it isn't a classic worth lingering on.