Frank Tashlin’s Rock and Roll Musical:
The Girl Can’t Help It
The Saturday night Frank Tashlin retro continued with a screening of his 1956 film starring Jayne Mansfield and Tom Ewell,
The Girl Can’t Help It; the film was proceeded by a screening of another Tashlin Looney Tunes,
Cracked Ice (1938), which involved a WC Fieldsish pig trying to finagle “two fingers” of gin from a droopy St. Bernard, which turns into a comic disaster involving some gin, a magnet, a drunk fish, and a pair of ice skates.
The Girl Can’t Help It is a bona fide rock n’ roll musical featuring energetic performances by Little Richard (before his era of self-parody), Fats Domino, The Platters, Vincent and His Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, The Treniers, The Chuckles, Abbey Lincoln, and Julie London (OK, OK, I haven’t heard of half of them either). The film strikes an irreverent, rebellious chord right away, as a tuxedoed Tom Ewell is on a Hollywood stage, decorated with musical instruments and Treble Clefs, the film is sepia toned and in academy ratio (1:37:1). Introducing himself to the audience, Ewell declares that the film is show in Cinemascope, and then notices the borders of the frame, and with a wave of his hand, first the left border, and then the right border shift to their proper Cinemascope dimensions (2.35:1); next he declares that the film is in “gorgeous, lifelike color by DeLuxe,” but notices the B&W, he then summons up some color, and an optical effect turns the B&W to vibrant color (Ewell muttering to himself about “whose running the store). Sharing the frame with a jukebox, he begins to speak about the film, declaring it to be about the culture and grace of music, but his voice is drowned out by the raucous
titular song. The camera pushes into the jukebox, and the credits begin. I love Tashlin’s irreverent tone, especially when it comes to Hollywood (another example, using the Oscar as a nutcracker in
Susan Slept Here), and I love the self-reflexive jokes. The cartoon short that proceeded the film,
Cracked Ice, also featured a self-reflexive joke, an off-screen heckler that we can hear on the soundtrack.
The film tells the tale of Tom Miller (Tom Ewell), a formerly successful agent who alienated his former love, Julie London (who was apparently a real-life mid-century pop star, who plays herself in the film), by pushing her into a career that she didn’t want. When she left him, he turned to the drink, lost most of his clients (at the beginning of the film he fails to get a contract for an extremely energetic jazz combo with a spastic lead singer/saxophonist), and got into debt. Miller is courted by Marty “Fats” Murdock (Edmund O’Brien), a former gangster, who after a stint in the penitentiary, came out to find himself irrelevant and forgotten. Murdock wants to marry Jerri/Georgiana Jordan (Jayne Mansfield), the daughter of a former business associate, but he feels he can’t marry her unless she is famous, so he conspires to have Miller turn her into a star. Even though Miller has a reputation for not getting involved with his female talent, Jerri and Tom fall in love over the course of the picture, causing repeated fits of jealously from Murdock (also I have no idea whether Tom and Jerri were named after the famous MGM cartoon duo, this film was produced by Fox).
Like Jerry Lewis in
Artists and Models, Jayne Mansfield is the comic centerpiece of the film (though she is often given a run for her money by the brash Edmund O’Brien character), with her exaggerated sex pot, hourglass figure (that has to be the tinniest waist I’ve ever seen, at least in comparison with her bosom and hips), exaggerated, sexual manner of movement (whenever she walks by some man, not only does she noticeably sway her hips, but she seems to thrust her breast up; the film also finds many ways for her to bend over), and her breathy voice. The film gets a lot of comic mileage out of the disparity between her sexualized, bimbo image and her dreams of being “domestic,” getting married, cooking, and having a large family. One sequence in particular is hilarious (follow this
link for some frame captures from this sequence); Mansfield walks down the street in a tight, black, cleavage revealing dress to a reprise of the title song. She walks pasts an ice delivery truck, and the delivery man stares at her, his hands on a block of ice that rapidly melts; the milk man stares at her and milk begins gushing out of the bottle; and old man stares at her legs and his glasses break, all the while, Mansfield’s character is oblivious to her effect on the men around her. The scene is capped when Miller answers the door, Mansfield is holding a jug of milk in front of each breast (of course, this isn’t there are plenty more moments of bawdy humor in the film, another more “subtle” one is how the nightclub managers seems to rise up, and assume a more erect posture as Mansfield sashes by).
Actually, for a bawdy, irreverent film, featuring lots and lots of energetic rock n’ roll performances, it is streaked with melancholy. Tom Miller is a failed alcoholic, who regrets what happened between him and Julie London. In one scene, he puts on one of her records and pours himself a drink; then Julie London begins appearing all over his apartment, serenading him with a sad song. “Fats” Murdock yearns for his early days when he was the slot machine king of New York, he desperately does not want to be forgotten, watching newsreels from his glory days (when he was “Slim” Murdock, it was the rich European cuisine and the lack of activity when he was on the lam that caused him to become fat) and telling stories about his fallen comrades, and Jerri Jordan only goes along with Murdock’s plans for marriage and her career out of a sense of obligation for the help he gave her father in avoiding a long prison sentence. It’s a credit to Tashlin’s abilities as a writer-director that he can successfully keep the comedy going, even as he introduces the darker, sadder aspects of his story.
Even though Jerri “proves” that she can not sing, Murdock commands that Miller proceeds with her career, insisting that they cut a record using one of his many hilariously awful, prison-themed songs that he wrote while, appropriately enough, in prison. Even though Jerri’s contribution to the single is a lone shrill, siren-like sound effect, the record becomes a hit, and Jerri a star. OK, OK, it’s mostly because Murdock, inspired by the news that his old gangland rival is in control of the nation’s jukeboxes, begins a racketeering operation to replace his rival’s jukeboxes with his own, all of which play Jerri’s single (Murdock also has his milquetoast assistant, Mouse, spy on Jerri and bug her phones; after over hearing a phone conversation where Jerri and Tom confess their love for each other, the ever empathetic Mouse breaks down and cries along with Jerri, and he hatches a plan to hide their relationship and get Murdock end his plans).
At the Rock N’ Roll Jubilee (after which she is supposed to get married to Murdock, who by now is having second thoughts), Jerri is supposed to sing her big hit, but instead she sings, really sings, a love song for Tom. Surprised, Tom can’t take it anymore, and goes outside, where he meets up with Murdock and Mouse, who are then promptly jumped by Wheeler, the jukebox gangster who has to come to exact his revenge. Out gunned, Tom, Murdock, and Mouse retreat. With no place to hide, Tom pushes Murdock on stage and says he will perform the song he wrote. The crowd of bobby soxers love his performance, even initiating his own dance craze. Wheeler is about to have Murdock shot, but then he notices the teenagers reaction to his performance, and instead of killing, decides to sign him for his record label (I don’t know what this says about the music industry, despite all of the lavish attention and staging for the real music acts, the youths of America fall hard for a bad performer singing a ridiculous song; and the head of the music company is a gangster willing to kill someone one moment, and then sign him up for a record the next, if it means a hit).
The film cuts to the tropics, Tom and Jerri are on their honeymoon. On TV is Murdock performing his hit with a laconic Mouse, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, backing him up with his guitar. Finally, we get a reprise of the opening scene, but this time Tom is joined first by Jerri, then their several kids, and then Murdock himself. Tom and Jerri kiss and the frame borders begin to push back like a curtain. As the borders close, Murdock runs forward into a close-up, and begins to energetically address the audience, saying he will continue performing for us. That’s entertainment. Tashlin again crafts a comedy around a flash point of 50s youth culture, creating not only a hilarious comedy, but a portrait of a specific time and place. Tashlin easily assumes the comics place along side the more dramatic Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk, and Samuel Fuller as chroniclers of 1950s America. It’s interesting to note that for a decade marked by it’s button-down manner, that’s it’s key American filmmakers were all purveyors of excess.
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