CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

JohnHowardReid NOTES: The play opened on Broadway at the Belasco on 13 October 1955, and ran a most successful 444 performances. As it happens, however, all Hollywood bought was the title, and even this was changed in England and Australia. Although the central character in both movie and play have the same name, the action is entirely different. In the play, the writer (Orson Bean) sells his soul to a satanic Hollywood agent (Martin Gabel) in exchange for an Oscar and the favors of Hollywood's number one sex symbol (Jayne Mansfield, in her Broadway debut). In the end, our Hunter is rescued by Walter Matthau. Also in the Broadway cast were Tina Louise, Harry Clark, Carol Grace and Michael Tolan. The famous songwriter Jule Styne produced, while playwright Axelrod himself directed.COMMENT: It's a mystery why Fox bothered to fork out a hefty fee to Axelrod to purchase the movie rights to his Broadway play. Some commentators have suggested the studio just wanted to buy the title. If so, they certainly short-changed themselves, as they actually changed the title (not only in England and Australia, but also in Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Bermuda, Trinidad and Hong Kong). Hollywood is rarely prepared to attack Hollywood, let alone hold the industry up to more than the mildest satire. Television, however, has always been fair game. So what we have here represents a complete shift in target. Television and TV advertising are now firmly in the firing line. Given that shift, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" still comes over as very, very funny. Tony Randall, who never gave a bad performance in his life (even when atrociously miscast as in "The Seven Faces of Dr Lao"), makes the most of one of the most perfectly tailored roles he was ever handed. It seems likely that Frank Tashlin, the writer, performed the same service for Jayne Mansfield, for she is likewise inspired. The two principals play in amusingly-timed rapport. No doubt the encouragement of Tashlin, the director, helped no end. In this latter function, Tashlin has inventively filled the wide expanses of his CinemaScope screen not only with pleasing players (including Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams and Miss Mansfield's real-life husband, Mickey Hargitay), but deft visual and aural effects. In some of these highly diverting moments, you can sense that the director's early training in the Warner Bros cartoon division was indeed time well spent.

jjnxn-1 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.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

August1991 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.