Girl Can’t Help It, The (1957)

This rock ‘n’ roll comedy starring Tom Ewell and the pneumatic Jayne Mansfield is witty, stylish, clever and (by today’s standards) extraordinarily sexist.

Tom Miller (Ewell), a small-time theatrical agent, is given the task of turning glamorous Jerri Jordan (Mansfield in her first film) into a top rock ‘n’ roll personality in six weeks.

There are problems: Jerri can’t sing and doesn’t want to be a star, Tom is falling for her, and her boyfriend, Marty “Fats” Murdock (Edmond O’Brien), happens to be a washed-up ex-gangster.

Eventually, everyone gets what they want: Jerri marries her agent, and Fats becomes a recording star with a #1 hit entitled Rock Around The Rockpile – although Murdock suggests a number of alternate titles such as No Lights On The Christmas Tree, Mother – They’re Using The Electric Chair Tonight, and I’ll Get No Good Behavior Baby, If I Keep Thinking Of You.

The film features more than a dozen beautifully filmed major music acts, including Little Richard (who wrote the title song), Eddie Cochran (singing Twenty Flight Rock), Fats Domino (Blue Monday), and Gene Vincent singing Be Bop a Lula (alongside his heroic, gum-chewing proto-punk guitarist Paul Peek).

The acting stinks and the dialogue sucks, but the use of CinemaScope is exemplary, and the movie is a perfect 1950s piece. There are two justly famous scenes . . .

First, trussed up in the tightest suit imaginable, Jerri walks down a street to Tom Miller’s house. A man is delivering ice. He turns to gawp. The mountain of ice melts in an ejaculatory gush. Jerri walks up the stairs past a geeky milkman. He gawps and metaphorically cums as his milk bottles pop their caps and blow their load.

Another set of stairs inside Miller’s building, and an old bloke is picking up his milk from his doorstep. He gawps. His glasses crack (director Frank Tashlin’s background as a Looney Tunes animator is clearly on show), and he appears paralysed with shock and awe.

The scene ends when Jerri gatecrashes an embarrassed Miller’s bedroom and has a conversation with two full bottles of milk held up in front of her torpedo bazoomas. The sexual connection between so many bodily fluids and functions has never been so memorably conveyed.

The other scene has Miller coming home to his empty flat after a long night drowning his sorrows. The major source of his angst is Julie London, who was the love of his life but has since departed, leaving him a washed-up lush. He puts on her big hit, Cry Me a River, and a ghostly apparition of London appears, taunting him.

He runs drunkenly from room to room, but Julie’s there, vaporous and vengeful no matter where he turns. It’s genuinely haunting, and the song is a torch classic.

Against a budget of $1.3 million, The Girl Can’t Help It went on to gross $6.25 million – considerably more than any rock ‘n’ roll movie before it, and the film brought rock’s most exciting names to the attention of millions.

The question still remains: how did Mr Average himself, Tom Ewell, get to co-star with such bombshells as Marilyn Monroe, Sheree North and Jayne Mansfield?

Tom Miller
Tom Ewell
Jerri Jordan
Jayne Mansfield
Marty ‘Fats’ Murdock
Edmond O’Brien
Mousie
Henry Jones
Wheeler
John Emery
Hilda
Juanita Moore
Julie London
Julie London
Fats Domino
Fats Domino
The Platters
The Platters
Eddie Cochran
Eddie Cochran
Little Richard
Little Richard
Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps
Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps
The Treniers
The Treniers
The Chuckles
The Chuckles

Director
Frank Tashlin

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