WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?

What if everything wrong with America could be traced back to advertising? And what if the only way to save yourself was to become the most famous man in the country? Frank Tashlin tackles these important questions in WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?, a candy-colored nervous breakdown about sex, celebrity, capitalism, and the terrible things people will do to get a key to the executive bathroom. Tony Randall plays Rock Hunter, a lowly advertising executive whose career depends on convincing Hollywood bombshell Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) to endorse a brand of lipstick. When Rita recruits him to pose as her boyfriend, Rock becomes an overnight national sex symbol, an achievement that comes as a considerable surprise to everyone who has ever met him.

Having already exposed the dangers of comic books and rock and roll, Tashlin now turns his attention to the people responsible for selling them to us. The result is a merciless CinemaScope assault on Madison Avenue, Hollywood, television, celebrity worship, and the American conviction that happiness can be achieved with the correct combination of consumer products. Mansfield brilliantly parodies her own bombshell persona, Randall gradually loses his mind, and an entire nation seems willing to surrender its dignity in exchange for a little publicity. Along the way, Tashlin interrupts his own movie to make fun of television, stages a series of commercials for products that might actually kill you, and reveals the executive bathroom as the spiritual center of American capitalism. It's one of the funniest movies ever made about selling your soul and discovering that nobody's particularly interested in buying it.