Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter

Plot

In lieu of a theme song and opening of the movie, Tashlin instead over laid traditional opening credits to faux television commercials for products that failed to deliver what they promise.

From this comedic segue, the film opens on a writer for television advertising, Rockwell P. Hunter (Tony Randall), who is low on the ladder at the La Salle agency, the company where he works. With the agency set to lose its biggest account – Stay-Put Lipstick – he hatches an idea to get the perfect model and spokeswoman for Stay-Puts new line of lipstick, the famous actress with the "oh-so-kissable lips", Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield).

In order for Rita to endorse the lipstick, however, Rock has to pretend to be her boyfriend to make her real boyfriend, Bobo Branigansky (Mickey Hargitay), the star of a TV Tarzan show, jealous. Bobo leaks the news of Ritas new romance to the tabloids and Rock Hunter is suddenly famous as Marlowes "Lover Doll". Hunters boss decides to leverage his employees newfound fame—however when Hunter also gets Marlowe to agree on a television spectacular sponsored by Stay-Put, Hunter becomes the advertising firms highest regarded employee. Marlowe meanwhile is miserable—she thinks she is falling in love with Hunter, but her one real true love is the man who discovered her—George Schmidlap (Groucho Marx). Not being able to find Schmidlap, she pursues Hunter, even though her Secretary "Vi" (Joan Blondell) warns her that she is playing a dangerous game. (Ironically, Blondell, who plays Mansfields frumpy middle-aged, all-business secretary, was herself a major movie sex symbol some thirty years before—and whose sexuality was one of the first victims of the Hays Code).

Hunter soon finds fame to be a double edged sword, getting him what he wants, but with a price to be paid for that success. Women are crazy about him, and he has no peace of mind. Ultimately, he moves up the ladder at work, becoming company president, only to find it is not what he really wanted. Hunter confesses to his angry fiancee Jenny, that he finds himself at the top of the heap without any meaning and she takes him back.

As Rita Marlowe opens her television spectacular for Stay-Put Lipstick, she is surprised by the appearance of the shows "surprise" guest star of (and the first real love of her life), George Schmidlap.

Freed from strain of advertising, Rock and Jenny retire to the country to tend a chicken farm announcing that he has found the real living end.

Production

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? received a nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actor – Musical/Comedy (Tony Randall) and a nomination for the Writers Guild of America, East WGA Award (Screen) for Best Written American Comedy (Frank Tashlin). The character, Rita Marlowe, is based on dumb blond stereotype epitomized in the 50s by Marilyn Monroe.

In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The film contains joking references to several of Mansfields other roles, including The Girl Cant Help It (1956; also directed by Tashlin), Kiss Them for Me (1957), and The Wayward Bus (1957). The book Mansfield reads in the bathtub scene is Peyton Place (1956) by Grace Metalious, which eventually became a feature film and a popular TV series that is claimed to be the forerunner of prime time soap operas. It has been claimed that the buxom characters in the book were inspired by Mansfield.

Legacy

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was a runaway success. The film is known as Mansfields "signature film", and is in a package called "The Jayne Mansfield Collection" along with The Girl Cant Help It (1956) and The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958).