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Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

United States

1957

93 Min
Color
2.35:1
French, English
  • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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DIR Frank Tashlin

PROD Frank Tashlin

SCR George Axelrod, Frank Tashlin

DP Joseph MacDonald

CAST Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake

Berlinale (Retrospective)

Synopsis

Jayne Mansfield teams with Tony Randall in this hilarious spoof about an ad man who nabs a movie star for his campaign — and opens a can of worms in the process. Ad writer Rockwell Hunter (Randall) thinks he’s hit the jackpot when sexy starlet Rita Marlowe (Mansfield) agrees to endorse a line of lipstick he’s touting. But when the press mistakes the business partnership for an affair, it’ll take some tricky maneuvers to set the story straight.

Director

Original

Frank Tashlin

Few filmmakers have moved as easily between animated and non-animated work as New Jersey-born Frank Tashlin. A school drop-out at age 13, he drifted into a multitude of jobs before he went to work for producer Paul Terry at 17, as a cartoonist on Terry’s Aesop’s Film Fables animated shorts. Three years later he was working as a gagman for Hal Roach, and soon after began his own comic strip, which ran through 1939. He worked for Disney’s story department until the mid ‘40s, and later joined Warner Bros., where he became a director for Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon unit. But from the middle of the decade onward, he moved out of animated work entirely and into comedy screenwriting, adapting One Touch of Venus as a film vehicle, and then taking up writing for Bob Hope (The Paleface, etc.) and Red Skelton (The Fuller Brush Man, etc.), and later became a director for Jerry Lewis (Geisha Boy, Cinderfella), Hope (Son of Paleface), and Doris Day (The Glass Bottom Boat). His experience in cartoons… read more

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Picture of Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman

28Apr12

Tony Randall is the stand out in this entertaining and very funny satire. Recommended viewing for sure!

Picture of Eleni Ashton

Eleni Ashton

23Apr12

Rocks' oversized suit is reminiscent of David Bryne's in 'Stop Making Sense'.

Picture of Sudipto Basu

Sudipto Basu

30Jun11

Though a broad comedy on the surface, this is quite incisive in its parody and critique of celeb culture and advertising. The jokes are hilarious! And there's Groucho Marx. :)

Langston Young likes this

Picture of Alexander Peacock

Alexander Peacock

6Apr11

Great fun!!! Compare with Masumura's Giants and Toys for a similar tale...

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The Forgotten: The Family Way

By David Cairns on August 11, 2011

An obscure Frank Tashlin comedy exceeds expectations and reveals a fascinating phase in his artistic development.

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W184

Tuesday Foreign Region Blu-ray Disc Report: "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" (Frank Tashlin, 1957)

By Glenn Kenny on October 26, 2010

Do you remember the old Peanuts strips in which Linus would skitter about in anxiety, complaining to Lucy that he'd suddenly become "aware

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