☆ ☆ ☆
Will
Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) – F.
Tashlin
Perhaps you had to grow up in the 1950s to
find Frank Tashlin’s films funny (he began by working with Jerry Lewis)? Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum finds this film to
be a subversive masterpiece, but I find myself scratching my head to understand
why. (Tashlin’s Son of Paleface, 1952,
with Bob Hope was funnier). Sure, he
brings the same comic book sensibility to this satire of the advertising world,
with oddball intertextual references and nearly surreal action (she drops a
flowerpot on his head, popcorn pops in his pocket – some of this could have
easily happened in Loony Tunes). Tony
Randall plays Rock Hunter, a TV jingle writer who manages to convince Rita
Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) to endorse Stay-Put Lipstick for his agency – but only
if he pretends to be her lover (“Lover Doll”) in order to make her current
boyfriend (a Tarzan-type) jealous. Of
course, this is all a bit of a tilt at Marilyn Monroe (and Arthur Miller) but
sixty years later, it feels rather obvious; that said, there are apparently sly
references to all manner of fifties phenomena that went right over my
head. What I didn’t miss was most of the
sexual double entendres (aimed at Mansfield’s figure, of course) but there are
surprisingly fewer of these than expected. Naturally these aren’t why the Rosenbaum
thinks the movie delightfully subversive – instead, it’s the overall assumption
that material success isn’t worth it.
Rock Hunter discovers that the big office isn’t all it’s cracked up to
be (and he’d rather be a chicken farmer).
In fact, Randall spends the entire film learning that what society taught
him to want (money, glossy gals, etc.) isn’t really what he wants. Maybe that message was more subversive or
funny in the 1950s.
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