Movie review - "Rally Round the Flag Boys" (1958) **

 George Axelrod complained he and Leo McCarey came up with a bold plan to adapt this novel but Fox backed out and so Axelrod left. Maybe his approach would've been better. But it's hard to see even that working with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the leads. Both are attractive and obviously talented actors but their comic timing is a mess and they seem too young - as does Joan Collins. Newman's trying to be Cary Grant but he doesn't seem like a family man especially one with an itchy eye. Maybe Tom Ewell? 

Joan Collins is better - too young as well but she's hugely fun. She would've been better a decade older but I liked her. She's stronger than Jayne Mansfield (the original choice vetoed by the Newmans) would have been.

Tuesday Weld is perfect as their yappy babysitter. She is involved in a very funny love triangle with Dwayne Hickman as a Marlon Brandon worshipper and some yokel soldier. This is funny. Jack Carson is funny too as a bombastic soldier.

But Newman wrecks it, basically. 

Movie review - "Single Room Furnished" (1966) *1/2

 Last starring vehicle for Jayne Mansfield. It's her biggest challenge - she plays three roles. The film was directed by one of her husbands, Matt Cimber.

The film starts with a wise old janitor telling a rebellious daughter three stories: Mansfield plays a different character in each story. This was based on a play and that sort of device always works better in theatre than in film. Actually to be fair her third and second characters are meant to be the same person just with different names (was this added in post production?) But they feel like different peopole.

Story one has Mansfield as the pregnant wife of Martin Horsey, who is far too young - or rather Mansfield is too old for her part, especially in the scenes that flashback to when they met and she's meant to be just out of school. And she isn't very good. Sorry. She could've been protected by aging up the character at least.

Story two Mansfield plays another pregnant woman to an unseen man. She tells an older guy, Fabian Dean,about it. There's too much Acting from Dean and another older lady who is his friend.

Story three has Mansfield as a hooker in an abusing relationship with Walter Gregg. This one isn't bad and made me wish they'd just fleshed this one out. 

It could have done with trashier elements like sex, violence and nudity to liven things up. As it is too often this is like watching bad amateur theatre from recent graduates.

TV review - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 1 Ep 12 - Hangover" (1962) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 Reunites Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield from Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Randall even plays an ad man again. He's got a hangover and can't remember what he did. There was a Cornell Woolrich story with that plot but this one is based on a story by John D MacDonald.

Randall is excellent and believable in his descent to murder. Mansfield is quite good - better than the actor who plays Randall's wife. Mansfield's short hair is a shock and it works for the reality of her performance.

It didn't need to be an hour. It feels like half an hour. I thought it would be Randall retracing his steps and he does a bit of that but there's no real accumulation of narrative. It's more, he was on the piss, remembers how he stuffs up, accidentally kills his wife.

Worth a watch though esp for that Randall-Mansfield re-teaming.

Movie review - "It Happened in Athens" (1962) **1/2

Part of Spyros Skouros' Greek kick when he was the top dog at 20th Century Fox. It's not a bad idea for a film - the story of the Greek shepherd who won the original marathon at the Olympics - but it's hurt by lack of star power. Although Fox had plenty of young contract players they picked random Trax Colton and unknowns like Maria Xenia. Don't laugh but this would've made an ideal vehicle for someone like Pat Boone - wholesome, positive, maybe some songs.

I'm guessing they did it for budget reasons. Failing that they should have had Nico Minardros play the lead and had an English or American actor play the rival.

The money did extend to cover location footage and CinemaScope... the locations are gorgeous and in colour. But it's too "foreign" - at least I think it was for English speaking audiences. The biggest American actor after Mansfield was Bob Mathias.

Story wise there's too many scenes of people watching events and it's kind of hard to care too much about the romance between Colton and Xenia. It needed a real villain or another subplot or something. Three's about thirty minutes of story here.

Mansfield is fun and looks gorgeous in her outfits, either like a doll on a wedding cake, or in some lingere. It's fun how she tries to seduce Colton - they could've had more fun with this.

The spectacle of the crowd is fun, as is the colour. And it's hard not to feel roused as Colton runs into the stadium and all the Greeks leap to their feet to celebrate. It's pleasant enough I just wish it was better.

Movie review - "The Challenge" (1960) **1/2 aka It Takes a Thief

Jayne Mansfield was an imitation Marilyn Monroe but here she steps into a part that really should have been played by Diana Dors - the sexy leader of a gang of crooks.

Like Too Hot to Handle it's a lower budgeted British crime film, with an imported star, decent director (in this case John Gilling), European male lead (in this case Carl Monher), jazzy soundtrack, Mansfield sings a song.

It's got a solid story - a gang try to find out where Anthony Quayle hid money - and stakes - they kidnap Quayle's son. Mansfield isn't really convincing as the gang leader - and you know something? She didn't have to play that. It would've been better had she just been the femme fetale who was decent with Mohner as the baddy.

Peter Reynolds, balding and pudgy faced, is scary as the gangster who befriends Quayle's kidnapped son and encourages him to run into a train. Edward Judd is good as a cop. The ending of this is suspenseful. Mansfield sings a song, which feels random.

This is a decent little movie.

Movie review - "Promises, Promises" (1963) **

Jayne Mansfield goes topless in a film starring, co written by and produced by Tom Noonan, the four eyed love interest of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.It's based on a play performed in Palm Springs - apparently they wanted Noonan to star in it which is how he knew about it.

The plot is quite racy involving two couples on a cruise ship: Mansfield and Noonan and Mickey Hargitay and Marie McDonald. They get drunk and there may have been cheating which becomes extra complicated when both women fall pregnant.

The cast is colourful to say the least. Three of them would be dead within a few years - McDonald from an overdose of pills, Mansfield in her car accident, and Noonan of a brain tumour. 

McDonald played a Mansfield type in The Geisha Boy and Noonan went on to make another racy comedy with a blonde, Three on a Nut.

Noonan is fine - he has a very long unfunny drunk scene with the other three watching awkwardly. Hagarity is awkward.  McDonald seems old. Mansfield is sweet. The nudity sparks things up. The comedy is hard to get through though there's some cuteness with split screem for the two couples.

 

Movie review - "Too Hot to Handle" (1960) ***

 Jayne Mansfield only had a few years in Hollywood studio pictures before she went to England for a few. It's a crime drama set in Soho, where there's dance numbers.

Mansfield plays the dancer girlfriend of manager Leo Genn. Mansfield does a few numbers. Carl Boehm plays a journalist doing a story on the club (snore). Chris Lee is dubbed as a treacherous associate of Genn's.

Genn isn't entirely well cast - too posh, not tough enough. It needed a Stanley Baker or someone. Mansfield isn't bad - she seems like a gal who's been around.

Lee looks the part though I hate they dubbed his lovely voice.

This feels like at heart it's a 60 minute film but they've added all these different musical numbers. Which has novelty, I admit.

There's some intense moments in this - an attempted rape scene at the end of a young Barbara Windsor by a crook.

This is a decent Soho thriller. Mansfield has a decent part. She's quite touching at the end, shopping Genn tot ehc ops.

Movie review - "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" (1957) **** (warning: spoilers)

 I wonder why Jayne Mansfield never worked with Frank Tashlin again after their first two films? She totally suited his world with her cartoony appearance and delivery. She's awkward in films like Wayward Bus and Kiss Them For Me but perfect here. I guess he went on to work for Jerry Lewis - but wouldn't Mansfield have worked in Lewis land? Marilyn Maxwell's part in Rock a Bye Baby feels very Mansfield as does Marie Windor's in The Geisha Boy.

This is fun. Apparently it's very different from the stage play which was gutsy but the story isn't super original - it's a fake fiancee story, with movie star Mansfield faking a romance with ad man Tony Randall to make her ex, Micky Hargitay, jealous.

Randall is an ideal lead - handsome enough but still dweeby. There's fun satire of TV, Madison Avenue, movie stars. I got some random jokes eg Mansfield starring in a Brothers Karamazov style piece (Marilyn Monroe had announced she wanted to be in this).  Betsy Drake offers nice support, as does Joan Blondell but the film is stolen by Groucho Marx's cameo at the end.

Movie review - "The Wayward Bus" (1957) **

Odd what was commercial cinema in the 1950s. This had CinemaScope but black and white, was based on a John Steinbeck novel, directed by someone called Victor Vicas, produced by Charles Brackett, using 20th Century Fox contract players like Jayne Mansfield, Joan Collins and Dan Dailey and newcomers like Dolores Michaels and Rick Jason.

The main plots: Rick Jason is married to boozy Joan Collins but they keep fighting, Dolores Michaels is a bit of a man trap and travels with her parents, 

I think they were hoping for another Bus Stop but it didn't turn out that way. Everything feels a bit off. The acting is inconsistent. I never bought Dailey and Mansfield... he's too cocky or something when it feels as though the role needs to be played by some old, bald loser grasping at happiness. They have no chemistry, the relationship feels rushed. Maybe if Mansfield's part was played by someone older, with more mileage - Lana Turner type.

Rick Jason feels too television and Anglo for a part that seems to require an Anthony Quinn. Collins tries and isn't bad but this needed to be a real boozer.

It just sort of clunks. They may as well made it trashier. Best scene is when Michaels (who's good) tries to seduce Jason in the barn. I think she succeeds though it's not sure.

Dumb endings - Mansfield unconvincingly goes off with Dailey, Collins unconvincingly reunites with Jason, Michaels unconvincingly proposes to her boyfriend.

Mansfield's part isn't that big.

Movie review - "Kiss Them for Me" (1957) **

A horny-sailors-on-shore-leave movie, based on a play (which was based on a novel), with the sailors being Navy fliers played by old actors, presumably so that star Cary Grant doesn't seem too old - his mates include Colonel Klink, Ray Walston and Larry Blyden. The director was Stanley Donen so there's a lot of talent here Added to that are Jayne Mansfield and Suzy Parker.

I think Fox might've wanted to make the film in part to use Mansfield. She doesn't have the female lead but it's a showy support turn as a comic blonde - Judy Holliday played it on Broadway (with Richard Widmark in the lead). Female lead goes to model Suzy Parker who isn't bad - beautiful and stylish. She's not great but she's not the problem. It's that the male leads are too old. I think Grant was like 30 years older than her. (I get the impression Parker was cast under the "we need a new Audrey Hepburn" grounds.) This needed some of Fox's younger brigade like, I don't know, Pat Boone and Stuart Whitman.

Scenes that are kind of done well like an angry Grant telling off a shipbuilding manufacturer who wants Grant to give speeches while Grant has PTSD don't fully work because Grant is so, well, old. Having said that I enjoyed the serious aspects of the film - Grant has malaria, dislikes war profiteers, meets a former colleague who is in a wheelchair and is dying, the team hears their old ship sunk and most of their comrades are dead. Also Mansfield propositions Ray Walston despite knowing he's married (he doesn't do it because he loves his wife and she just doesn't care).. and I think they do sleep together (she kisses him and he doesn't say no). And Parker and Grant seem to sleep together. This is effective. It just all feels like a film made too late (maybe it would've worked during the Korean War) with a cast too old.

Mansfield over acts at time. She does that silly squealing laugh that I think she was trying to make her trademark. That worked in her Tashlin movies which were cartoons but this needed to be more grounded and her performance has not adjusted accordingly.

Movie review - "The Burglar" (1957) ***

 Entertaining little B picture, the feature debut of Paul Wendkos, with a decent cast: Dan Duryea in the lead, Jane Mansfield de glamorised as the female lead, Mickey Shaugnessy, Martha Vickers from The Big Sleep as a gal who hangs out with Duryea.

It's a B but it has charms of the time - the black and white photography, jazz music, police procedural scenes (sketching and so on).

It's fun to see Mansfield dressed down, still hot, playing quite a meaty role - she's one of Duryea's gang, who harbours incestuous feelings for him (she's his foster sister).  I wish I could say she was good in the role - she's not, she's amateurish... but also effective. She does have star power. She made this just before her stage success in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Full of nice touches: the opening fake newsreel, location footage, finale in a fun house. And the film doesn't whimp out.

Movie review - "Mansfield 66/67" (2017) **

 Interesting documentary about Jayne Mansfield. The talking heads include John Waters (always fun), Mamie Van Doren, Mary Woronov, lots of PhD graduates, drag queens, Dolly Read from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

The cut aways to a stage musical doesn't quite work and there's a lot of emphasis on Mansfield's relationship with a Satanist. Wasn't that a small part of her life?

Good vision. Mansfield looked terrible towards the end.

It's fascinating how she's become this icon. She was only in two hit films. I guess she died interestingly.

Movie review - "The Female Jungle" (1955) **

Super low budget but it actually works in a way because it's set in a studio and shot at night... there's a surreal, nightmare quality to it. 

Lawrence Tierney is a cop investigating a crime which he might've committed because he was too drunk. There's elements of Laura - the dead girl was a model, adored by a pompous columnist (John Carradine).

Jayne Mansfield is a trampy blonde. she's fun as is Carradine and Tierney. No real leading person - it keeps changing. 

This was an early AIP release. I couldn't pick the killer.

Movie review - "The Girl Can't Help It" (1956) ***

 A film beloved by boomers because it introduced rock music in big wide screen colourful numbers - serious artists too.

I think this was meant to be based on Do Re Mi a novel by Garson Kanin. Fox bought the novel in 1955 and announced the film would star Tom Ewell and Sheree North who had been in The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. Nunnally Johnson was supposed to direct. Then North dropped out. Jayne Mansfield stepped in off the back of her stage success.

How much was this Do Re Mi? Because there was a Phil Silvers stage musical based on that later.

Anyway it is bright and colourful. Great music. Edmund O'Brien is fun as the gangster turned singer. I could take or leave Tom Ewell, then at his brief stardom peak. Jayne Mansfield is very sweet.

Movie review - "The George Raft Story" (1961) **

Allied Artists had a hit with Al Capone and ushered in a bunch of gangster flicks including this biopic of the gangster's pal, George Raft. Raft had one of the most fascinating careers of any actor but lawsuits are lawsuits hence this fictionalised version.

Ray Danton should have become a bigger star - handsome, deep voice, can act, can even dance a little. He moves like a dancer so he's not bad casting for Raft. Maybe he lacked a certain warmth. There's a lively collection of support players including Frank Gorshin, Julie London and none other than Jayne Mansfield who plays a Hollywood starlet. She's in a swimsuit in one scene and looks a little heavy as well as being top heavy but it's fun to see her.

Sometimes the film stumbles upon elements of the real Raft - his financial irresponsibility, his tendency to confuse the parts he played with himself, his desire to do more dancing films and less gangster parts, his friendship with Bugsy Siegel, his tendency to punch people out (including producers on set), his trouble with the IRS, his tendency to be alone. I thought it was cute when he goes to see Al Capone (Neville Brand) after making Scarface to find Capone likes the movie, and hangs out with Texas Guinan, and I didn't mind gangsters firing a machine gun at him.

Other items seem more random. Inserting a night club comedy act from these two comics plus a long song from Julie London (were Allied pushing these talents?). Domestic scenes with his loving mama and disapproving father (which seem like a sketch to send up this sort of biopic eg "how can I tell my friends what I'm doing?").

There's a director on Scarface who I assume is meant to be Howard Hawks. I'm not sure who Mansfield was meant to play - maybe Betty Grable. There's no Carole Lombard or anyone like that - only the gangsters get named. Actually no that's not true - Billy Wilder is mentioned at the end but not seen.

It's not successful as a movie - you can't feel any point to it, there's no theme other than maybe Raft has trouble letting anyone in to love him and is a bit of a sook. I kept expecting that nice cigarette girl to re appear but it doesn't happen. 

Still, as a Raft fan I got a lot out of it - I thought Danton did a decent version of Raft, and I was constantly going "oh that's true... that's not... that's really not... that's true..." so it passed the time entertainingly.

Movie review - "Bachelor Flat" (1962) **

Underwhelming comedy which made me consistently wonder "what is the point of this?" "Why are we watching this?" Terry Thomas is a professor at a Los Angeles college - there's some funny early stuff with some of his female students being obsessed with him, which made me laugh. But then the plot kicks in and doesn't have much to do with it - he's engaged to Celeste Holm and Holm's daughter Tuesday Weld turns up and Thomas has a lecherous neighbour Richard Beymer.

Terry Thomas runs around in his boxer shorts a lot while drunk. There's a comic dog (who is funny), a dinosaur bone, women throwing themselves at Terry Thomas. It's all so contrived - there's really no good reason why Holm didn't tell Thomas about Weld, or why she pretends to be a delinquent, or why Thomas tries to hide her. It's sloppily plotted and the jokes and charm aren't enough to compensate.

There's a lot of Richard Beymer, the bucktoothed heartthrob of the early 60s. He's fine, not terrible - but he's not as good as, say, Jim Hutton. It's a good role for Weld who does fine - playing a person who acts all sorts of roles which is interesting. Terry Thomas plays it in cartoon style - which is fine, I guess, but I didn't care what happened to him. The one moment I cared for the characters was a scene between Beymer and Weld on the beach, this was sweet.

It's frantic and occasionally pervy, like a lot of Tashlin directed films (lots of shots of female legs, a scene with a girl lying on a wobble board and her boobs move). It's full of Tashlin touches like bright colour and movement and jokes about Jayne Mansfield. It's just not very funny.

I liked the views of Malibu. And there's a good support performance from Francesca Bellini, who I wasn't familiar with, who plays a girlfriend of Beymer. Actually the acting in this is fine - the cast all commit - it's the dodgy script.

Kenneth More Top Ten

1) Genevieve (1953) - cheery breezy fun where More teams so well with Kay Kendall you wish they'd made a bunch of other movies.
2) Reach for the Sky (1956) - British film par excellance - bit of drama, stiff up lip, cheeriness, being a POW is like being at school, etc. More is very good
3) A Night to Remember (1958) - excellent account of the Titanic with More underplaying effectively in an ensemble piece.
4) Doctor in the House(1954) - More's also good against Dirk Bogarde - why not reteam them?
5) The Admiral Crichton (1957) - entertaining colourful adventure comedy with More very well cast
6) Dark of the Sun (1968) - only a small part but I love the film and More's work in it
7) Northwest Frontier (1958) - postwar Imperial adventure tale, self consciously superior to natives, with More a refreshingly different type of action hero
8) The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) - More's attempt to become a US star and he might have done it with a better co star and stronger material - his fine work was not really appreciated in the US.
9) Appointment with Venus (1951) - More has a showy support role in a fun film
10) The Deep Blue Sea (1954) -bad version of a wonderful play. More is excellent though.

Book review - "The Tragic Secret Life of Jayne Mansfield" by Raymond Strait (1976)

Mansfield was only ever really in two films of note but has managed to carve out her own niche in Hollywood - due to a combination of things: those two films were for auterist darling Frank Tashlin, her big boobs, her massive IQ, her famous daughter, her interesting death.

Strait did press for Mansfield for a number of years so had inside knowledge. I had this image of her as a super smart girl who could play the fiddle and was better than what Hollywood had to offer. This confirms that but also shows her to be a bit of, well, fool - she was hooked on booze, and sex, and men, and fame, and constantly made bad decisions. Her ambition and work ethic got her to a decent position in Hollywood but she blew it with bad choices, particularly with management, projects and men.

She loved boozing, and sex, and being famous. She wasn't a particularly good mother, or actor. She worked hard enough to keep her profile going - when the film roles dried up (relatively quickly) she kept things going with live appearances.

If you're interested in Mansfield's private life this really is a warts and all - there are a lot of warts. Mansfield doesn't come across as a terribly likeable person. There are some interesting bits, like the fact she shaved her pubic hair (it's that much of an inside job!) but mostly it's harrowing, with a lot of squabbling and failure. Her death almost comes as a relief.

I would have liked to have read more about the films but that wasn't the focus of the book. (There is a lot on Promises, Promises and Single Room Unfurnished.) It wasn't a fun read.

Movie review - "The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw" (1958) **1/2

Many of Kenneth More's films in the late 50s were aimed towards the American market, not to much success. This was perhaps his most concerted attempt to crack it there, complete with American director (Raoul Walsh), co-stars and an especially constructed plot aimed at using More's appeal in a way to cross over to Americans: it's a fish out of water comedy, with More as an English gun salesman who goes Out West and encounters gunslingers, saloon gals, and Indians. The joke is meant to be that the locals think he's a dab hand with guns when he's not - but he's gun salesman so the fish isn't really out of water.

More does his Kenneth More thing with aplomb: the cheery, hail-fellow-well-met Englishman abroad, able to get along with everyone whether they are Indians or gunslingers, but a stickler for rules and proper behaviour, unshowily brave. His co-star, Jayne Mansfield, is a major debit - her performance is dreadful, and they don't even put her in any revealing outfits, despite appearing in a saloon show (although she does get to mime a decent tune, 'I Love You'). She and More don't have much chemistry either. William Campbell, Henry Hull and Bruce Cabot all give the sort of supporting actors in Western films you'd expect them to give regardless of the star. Sid James is in it too as a drunk.

It's amiable enough: More's in good form, the depiction of the Indians is sympathetic, the colour photography is pleasing. The running gag about the undertaker being constantly disappointed that More isn't killed surely was old even at the time and they milk the concept of More being a blood brother to the Indians for all it's worth. It's a shame Robert Morely didn't decide to come out west (he's in the beginning and that's it).

Movie review – “Rock-a-Bye-Baby” (1958) ***1/2

Jerry Lewis’ first two films after the split with Dean Martin were obviously originally written to be performed by a duo – The Delicate Delinquent and The Sad Sack – but this one is feels geared for a solo actor. As ever, they’ve played it safe, remaking The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (not that Sturges worked on the film). Marilyn Maxwell, who often co-starred with Abbott and Costello on radio, is the lead – a film star who is worshipped by childhood friend Jerry Lewis to such a degree it’s pathetic more than touching. She gets pregnant (apparently she married the guy the night he knocked her up then he died – yeah right) and asks Jerry to raise the kids.

 

Typical of Tashlin, there’s lots of satire on Hollywood (beauty contests, jokes about screenwriters who don’t read the original book, a spoof of Easterns – ‘the White Virgin of the Nile’ which stars Maxwell), plenty of good looking girls, and sexy talk (eg Lewis and Connie Stevens realising they can have sex at the end and gleefully running off to do it) . Some very funny gags such as Jerry pretending to be various TV programs through a set, and him feeding all the babies with a rubber glove that has very long fingers; he also does a wonderful rock n roll number, doing dance moves to spoof Elvis – and he’s terrific.

 

Lewis personally selected Connie Stevens to play Maxwell’s younger sister who is in love with him – she’s terrific, pretty and crazy enough to make you believe she’d go for him; Lewis rarely had a better female co-star (she’s up there with Shirley MacLaine in Artists and Models and Stella Stevens in The Nutty Professor). Maxwell is only so-so – she’s too old and not a believable star. I wish Jayne Mansfield played this.