Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
1957, NR, 94 min.
Directed by Frank Tashlin, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Joan Blondell, Betsy Drake, Jayne Mansfield, Tony Randall, Mickey Hargitay, Groucho Marx.

This Frank Tashlin double bill is a great way to kick off the Austin Film Society’s new summer season devoted to CinemaScope movies (see related story on p. xx in this week’s Screens section.) Tashlin demonstrated an innate knowledge of the capacties offered by the widescreen canvas, no doubt the result of his earlier years as an animator at several of the top Hollywood studios. The two films in this program star the human cartoon Jayne Mansfield, whose exaggerated body is already a widescreen gag. Tony Randall stars as the jaded ad exec, who tries to get a gorgeous movie star to endorse his product. The film is filled with a hmorously jaundiced view of the advertising and motion picture industries and the American star machinery.

This article appears in May 24 • 2002.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.