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The Girl Can't Help It
Directed by	Frank Tashlin
Produced by	Frank Tashlin
Written by	Frank Tashlin Herbert Baker
Starring	Tom Ewell Jayne Mansfield Edmond O'Brien
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	December 1, 1956
Running time	99 minutes
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Girl Can't Help It is a 1956 comedy, musical film, starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, and Edmond O'Brien. It was directed by Frank Tashlin, with a screenplay written by Frank Tashlin and Herbert Baker from an uncredited novel Do Re Me by Garson Kanin.

The original music score, including the title song by Little Richard, was by Bobby Troup, with an additional credit to Ray Anthony for the tune "Big Band Boogie". It was shot in Color (De Luxe), filmed in CinemaScope, and runs 99 minutes.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Analysis, criticism, reception 2.1 Songs performed in the movie 3 Cast 4 Trivia 5 Memorable Quotes 6 External links

A slot-machine mobster, Marty "Fats" Murdock (O'Brien) wants his blonde girlfriend, Jerri Jordan (Mansfield), to be a singing star, despite the fact that she seems to have no talent.

In order to achieve this aim, he hires a press agent, Tom Miller (Ewell), to promote her career. He chooses Miller, because of his past success with the career of singer Julie London (a fiction of the script) and the fact that he never makes sexual advances towards his female clients.

Miller reluctantly takes on the job and sets to work by showing her off around numerous night spots and rehearsal rooms in order that she may be seen by those that matter in show business. He merely requires her to move around looking beautiful whilst always dressed in the latest haute-couture fashions.

Miller's machinations arouse interest in Jerri and soon offers of contracts follow. A distraught Miller, terrified of Murdock, twists and turns and uses various ruses to keep him at bay. On top of this, there are the usual misunderstandings, when Mousie, Henry Jones, an associate of the ever jealous Murdock, misleadingly splices a recording of a wiretap between Miller and Jordan to make it seem as if the two have a business — rather than a romantic — connection.

Finally it is discovered that Jerri does have talent, which appears to solve Miller's problems. That is, until Jerri reveals that she is only interested in home and motherhood and that he is the real object of her affection. There is, of course, a happy ending for everyone.

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Tom Ewell gives a good performance in his role as Miller, although he is really reprising his role in The Seven Year Itch when he played opposite Marilyn Monroe. He maintains the stoic air of a man struggling against temptation.

Edmond O'Brien is loud and overbearing as Murdock, but his performance is obviously tongue-in-cheek and he shows a good grasp of comedy in some of his witty asides. Particularly memorable is his sentence, "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera", which is a parody of the same line used by Yul Brynner in the 1956 film The King and I.

Jayne Mansfield merely carries out the role the director has set for her. She utters a series of simple lines and stands or moves around looking beautiful. Her speech about a woman's place being in the home may sound old fashioned, but it was very much the way of thinking in 1956. Tashlin may have kept her role deliberately simple in order not to invite unfair comparisons with Marilyn Monroe, for whom the role may have originally been written. Mansfield's twee gasp was parodied shortly thereafter by the actress herself in the 1957 comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.

Bill Reed and David Ehrenstein said in Rock on Film (Delilah Books, 1981), "Jayne Mansfield is a succulent A-Bomb just waiting to explode in this satire of record industry hucksterism. And the look of the film is just right! Cinemascope, stereophonic sound and Technicolor you can eat with a spoon,"

Appearing at the night spots Miller and Jerri visit is a line-up of some of the golden greats of rock & roll, including Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Platters, Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps, and acrobatic pioneer rockers The Treniers, as well as lesser-known artists, such as Eddie Fontaine and The Chuckles, who obtained brief bursts of popularity in 1956 but soon faded. There are even young hopefuls like Teddy Randazzo, who hung around the rock and roll scene for years, but who never became major stars.

The auburn-haired, husky-voiced, sultry singer Julie London is also featured in the film. She appears in Miller's apartment as a haunting, spirit of a love past who follows him from room to room, constantly changing evening dresses and hair styles and singing her Top Ten hit of that year, "Cry Me a River".

The most memorable scene, however, is probably the one which introduces the film's theme song. In this scene, Jerri walks along the pavement like a fashion model on the catwalk, wearing a tight-fitting, black two-piece costume with matching broad-brimmed hat, gloves, shoes and handbag. All around men are ogling her, the ice on a delivery truck melts and the bottle of milk in a milkman's hand boils as she passes, whilst an unseen Little Richard is belting out, "The Girl Can't Help It" as various special effects match the lyrics, which tell of her effects on all objects: "the menfolk get engrossed...the bread slice turns to toast...the beefsteak become well done...she makes granpa feel like twenty-one...."

The Girl Can't Help It received critical praise at the time and was better regarded than other rock and roll films of the period such as Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, which were really promotional vehicles for Bill Haley & His Comets, and Rock, Rock, Rock which simply collected a bunch of performances around a slight storyline.

These films were considered to have been thrown together to cash in on the rock and roll craze. The Girl Can't Help It was considered to have a stronger storyline than these other films, to feature better known actors and to have the advantage of being shot in color. Some sources call The Girl Can't Help It the first rock and roll film, but its release was predated by Rock Around the Clock; it was, however, the first rock and roll film to be given the same sort of serious treatment as other major musicals of the day.

The Girl Can't Help It was also allowed to poke fun at rock and roll, which the other films were not.

In some scenes, the stockily built Edmond O'Brien wore a plaid dinner jacket of the type favoured at the time by the stockily built Bill Haley and, as a final twist, at the end of the film his character Murdock became a rock and roll singer. His voice was atrocious and his hit record, "Rock Around the Rock Pile," was really an impersonation of what an adult brought up in the Swing Era thought rock and roll sounded like.

Poking fun at this attitude was used to good effect in another scene. Here Miller is pleading with Murdock, over the telephone, that he cannot get Jerri a spot on television as she has no talent. Murdock screams at him to watch the television since, if someone can make a noise like the featured act and get on TV, there should be no problem in getting a TV spot for Jerri. Miller switches on the TV to witness a very young Eddie Cochran singing "Twenty Flight Rock".

The Girl Can't Help It was a box office success.

1. "The Girl Can't Help It" - Little Richard
2. "Tempo's Tempo" - Nino Tempo
3. "My Idea of Love" - Johnny Olenn
4. "I Ain't Gonna Cry No More" - Johnny Olenn
5. "Ready Teddy" - Little Richard
6. "She's Got It" - Little Richard
7. "Cool It Baby" - Eddie Fontaine
8. "Cinnamon Sinner" - Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles
9. "Spread the Word" - Abbey Lincoln
10. "Cry Me a River" - Julie London
11. "Be-Bop-A-Lula" - Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps
12. "Twenty Flight Rock" - Eddie Cochran
13. "Rock Around the Rockpile" - Ray Anthony Orchestra
14. "Rocking Is Our Business" - The Treniers
15. "Blue Monday" - Fats Domino
16. "You'll Never, Never Know" - The Platters
17. "Every Time You Kiss Me" - Unknown, lip-synched by Jayne Mansfield

• Tom Ewell as Tom Miller
• Jayne Mansfield as Jerri Jordan
• Edmond O'Brien as Fats Murdoc
• Julie London as Herself
• Ray Anthony as Himself
• Barry Gordan as Barry the paperboy
• Henry Jones as Mousie
• John Emery as Wheeler

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Producers wanted Elvis Presley to perform in the movie, but 'Col. Tom Parker' demanded too much money for Elvis to sing one song.

• The wedding dress that Jayne Mansfield wears was loaned to her to use for her real-life marriage to Mickey Hargitay in 1958.

• In the nightclub, when Jayne Mansfield is ready to go on stage, there is a chorus girl in the background Abbey Lincoln) who is wearing a costume that was previously worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)- the costume worm by Abbey Lincoln in that scene is the same red dress that Marilyn wore in the dining room scene from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".

• Some reference sources and websites erroneously suggest that Bill Haley and the Comets appear in this film. They do not.

• Production began on the film in mid-September 1956 just as Jayne Mansfield was finishing up her Broadway triumph in the play "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" The film was made just in time to be released for the Christmas season in 1956.

• This was the first of two comedies that Frank Tashlin wrote and directed which starred Jayne Mansfield. Tashlin once said, "There's nothing in the world to me that's funnier than big breasts."

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Tom Miller: She sings, that's what she does. She's got a great pair of lungs.

Jerri Jordan: I just want to be a wife and have kids. But everybody sees me as a sexpot. They don't think I'm equipped for motherhood.

Tom Miller: Six weeks? Easy, Fats. It takes time. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Fats Murdoc: She ain't Rome. What we're talking about is already built.
[points at Jerri Jordan's body]

Jerri Jordan: I hope you don't mind, it's only lemonade. But, I squeezed fresh lemons early this morning.
Tom Miller: Without your make-up on?
Jerri Jordan: You should have seen me! I was a mess!
Tom Miller: I don't believe it!

[Jerri kisses Tom]
Tom Miller: That's no way for a bride to act.
Jerri Jordan: I thought brides acted that way.
Tom Miller: Only with the groom.

Tom Miller: She's just a girl, Barry.
Barry the paper boy: If she's a girl, then I don't know what my sister is!

• The Girl Can't Help It at the Internet Movie Database