Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help it (1956)

Tashlin's films derive much of their originality from his awareness of innovations and his alacrity in taking advantage of them.  The Girl Can't Help It managed to use rock 'n' roll when it was still the kids' latest craze and its first quickies had hardly hit the circuits.
---Ian Cameron, Frank Tashlin, Edinburgh Film Festival 1973


I have written about Tashlin and his films a number of times on this blog:  April 11, 2014; Oct. 22, 2015; March 25, 2016;  Sept. 22, 2016.  Tashlin tends to get a bad reputation for having been a cartoonist and working with Jerry Lewis and not everyone can see that his films are both funny and serious, parodies and spoofs with genuine emotion.  He was one of the few directors to give African-Americans the credit for rock 'n' roll that they deserved.  Not only does he use a number of black musicians in The Girl Can't Help It but at one point he shows an African-American maid, played by Juanita Moore, dancing to the music of Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock," illustrating how much of rock and rockabilly came from black sources. 

Tashlin uses Jayne Mansfield effectively and compassionately in The Girl Can't Help It; his satire is not of her but of the American male fetish for large breasts.  Tashlin slowly builds up the relationship between Mansfield and her agent Tom Ewell while Ewell tries to make her a star at the behest of gangster Edmond O'Brien.  Meanwhile, Ewell drinks because he can't live with how he treated Julie London, who appears to him in glamorous outfits every time he puts her beautiful recording of "Cry Me a River" on the record player. Mansfield pretends not to be able to sing until Ewell leaves her on stage and then she sings to him a lovely version of "Every Time It Happens."

Tashlin knows how to use cinemascope and color; the film starts in the academic ratio with the 20th Century logo in back and white; then Tom Ewell comes on and widens the screen and adds color.  The film emphasizes primary colors, with Mansfield usually in red or yellow until she reveals her love for Ewell, when she wears a pastel-colored gown of pink and purple.  The cinematography is by the reliable Leon Shamroy, who did a number of Otto Preminger films, including the hallucinatory Skidoo (1968). 

It's quite a pleasure to see the music acts in The Girl Can't Help It; many of them get a chance to do complete songs (my own favorites in the  film are Fats Domino and Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps).  They make for an effective comment on the music business of the time, with juke boxes shown as controlled by organized crime and artists dependent on live performances.  The Girl Can't Help It is a vivid portrait of its time, but also transcends it with its insights into performance, passion and love.