THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (1957)

Fats (Edmond O'Brien) is a mobster who wants to marry his kept mistress Jerri (Jayne Mansfield, pictured) but he wants her to have a talent he can be proud of (besides being so sexy that men's glasses shatter and milk bottles spurt open when she walks past), so he hires agent Tom Miller (Tom Ewell) to make her a singing star. Tom starts by taking her out on the town to get some free publicity, but soon he has to face an unpleasant fact: she's an awful singer. Jerri admits to Tom that she doesn't want the high life, she just wants to be a housewife. But Fats insists on getting bandleader Ray Anthony to record a song he wrote, "Rock Around the Rockpile" (perhaps, with its prison life theme, this is a forerunner to Elvis's "Jailhouse Rock"?) and Jerri, rather than singing, provides a high-pitched siren screech at the climax of the song. Surprise, it's a hit! But soon, in scenes that parody 1930s gangster liquor war scenes, a jukebox war breaks out between Fats and his rival Wheeler, now a talent agent, and when Wheeler starts losing, he decides to take down his rival with a gun. But more surprises are in store here for all, including the fact that Tom and Jerri fall in love, and that Fats might be a promising entertainer in his own right.

This colorful celebration and parody of 1950s pop culture is cute and watchable, but I'm not sure how it wound up as part of the Criterion Collection, a brand which typically includes art films and, in their words, "important films." Though this is a narrative romantic comedy with an emphasis on satire, it's more known today for two other reasons: the climax of Jayne Mansfield's career as a Hollywood sex goddess, and the performances, sprinkled throughout the film, of a dozen or so 1950s rock and pop artists including Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, and the Platters, along with lesser-known but still interesting acts such as Abbey Lincoln, The Treniers, and Johnny Olenn. The plot is a Born Yesterday rehash but with a sort of second-string cast. Ewell, who managed in the space of two years to get cast opposite both Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe (in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH), is hangdog and drab—the boyish appeal he had with Monroe the year before is mostly gone here—and sort of sleepwalks his way through this film, though his double-take when he first meets Mansfield is classic. O'Brien is fine in the beginning but his hoarse growling gets monotonous. Mansfield is actually quite good, and gets better throughout as her character develops. The tit jokes (the eyeglasses, the milk bottles) are inevitable but caused my inner 13-year-old boy to laugh. The music is fun, and Henry Jones (a very familiar TV face and the handyman in THE BAD SEED) is a bright spot playing playing O'Brien’s assistant. But my absolute favorite part of the film is the presence of singer Julie London, playing herself as a former client of Ewell's that he had a crush on. As Ewell reminisces sadly, we see ghostly images of London in a variety of glamorous get-ups, lounging around Ewell's apartment as she sings her big hit "Cry Me a River." It's quite creative and funny. The rest of the movie is amusing and cartoonish, but could have used a little more wit and invention. [DVD]