The Girl Can't Help It

Recommended Reading The Life and Times of Little Richard : The Quasar of Rock / Charles White Blue Monday : Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll / Rick Coleman Rock 'n' Roll / Bob Brunning Rip it Up : The Black Experience in Rock 'n' Roll / edited by Kandia Crazy Horse Hollywood Babylon / Kenneth Anger Selections available through the Bangor Public Library

 

1956 • Directed by Frank Tashlin
With Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, Edmond O'Brien
Not Rated • 99 mins

The inimitable writer-director Frank Tashlin once more aims his satiric barbs at modern culture (modern 1950s culture, that is) in The Girl Can't Help It. Much of the film is dominated by Edmond O'Brien as mob boss Murdock, who while serving a term in federal prison becomes a singing sensation with his hit tune "Rock Around the Rock Pile." Once he's sprung, Murdock hires impoverished agent Tom Miller (Tom Ewell), not to promote his own career, but to turn his curvaceous lady friend Jerri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield) into a star. Alas, Jerri has no singing or acting talent whatsoever, a fact that she's eager and willing to admit. A domestic type at heart, all Jerri really wants out of life is to marry Murdock, so that she can clean his house, cook his meals and raise his children. When Murdock refuses to grant her wishes, Jerri falls in love with Tom instead.

Every so often, director Tashlin takes time out from the plot to poke fun at such technical marvels as CinemaScope and Technicolor, and to lampoon the American male's fixation on female bosoms and bottoms (at one point, Jayne Mansfield leans towards the camera, her cleavage exposed as far as the censors will allow, and plaintively asks Tom Ewell if he believes that she's equipped for motherhood). While much of the humor in the film is dated, The Girl Can't Help It is an invaluable record of the pop-music scene of the 1950s, featuring such guest artists as Julie London (playing Tom Ewell's dream girl), Ray Anthony, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard and his Band, Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps, the Treniers, Eddie Fontaine, Abbey Lincoln and Eddie Cochran.

—Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Used with permission

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