‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ or — “Dirty Mind, Dirty Mind, Dirty Mind!”?

It’s highly appropriate that ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ (1956) opens as a parody of Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ (1940) as Frank Tashlin’s (and ex-animator himself) film is a live-action cavalcade of colour, ravishing images and bopping music. Indeed, you could legitimately say the film was obsessed with music, specifically rock ’n’ roll, if it wasn’t for the fact the movie then quickly reveals its true obsessions — lactation and semen (look, this is what the movie’s about, okay, so don’t blame me).

As soon as Jayne Mansfield appears on-screen the milky white fluids start flying, frothing and spurting all over the place, especially when she shoves her milk bottles in men’s faces whilst telling them about how well equipped for motherhood she is. And that’s all Jerri wants — to be a loving mother, and not just to be ogled at. This means that Jayne Mansfield’s boobs constantly vibrate in the delicate bazooka Lagrange point between utility and ridicule, functionality and HOLY MAMA!!

Mansfield plays Jerri Jordan, girlfriend of gangster Marty “Fats” Murdock (Edmond O’Brien). “Fats” wants to make Jerri a star so gives down-on-his-luck talent agent Tom Miller (Tom Ewell) six weeks to transform Jerri into a nation-wide singing sensation… or else. There’s only one problem — Jerri can’t sing.

Tashlin and Mansfield’s secret weapon is to make Jerri utterly disinterested in fame and attention which automatically makes her intensely sympathetic and heart-breakingly adorable so the scene when we, along with Tom, realise that she can’t sing a note is not only incredibly hilarious but also deeply touching (her laughter at the expectations forced on her being suddenly shattered has the ecstatic relief of an orgasm).

Her lack of talent won’t deter “Fats”, however, who not only keeps pushing Jerri to perform but has even written the songs (all of which he wrote whilst in prison) she’ll be singing, including the truly god-awful ‘Rock Around the Rockpile’. There’s no way on earth this piece of crap will ever be recorded.

This then leads to one of the film’s other funniest moments when we immediately cut to an expensive recording studio where ‘Rock Around the Rockpile’ is being recorded by top musicians with world class production values. Jerri doesn’t need to sing, just make the occasional siren squeal (her one cartoonishly big note on her sheet music is one of the best sight gags I’ve ever seen) to qualify as the recording artiste. It took me thirteen hours to stop laughing from this sequence and I still haven’t fully recovered.

It’s not just on the sonic level that Mansfield mesmerises but also the physical, especially the way she walks, changing direction at 90-degree angles like a lightcycle from ‘Tron’ (1982) in heels.

All this is captured by some stunning cinematography by Leon Shamroy who lavishes us with the most dazzling colours — deep purples, unfathomable blues, molten reds — outside of a Douglas Sirk melodrama (check out the sequence where Julie London sings ‘Cry Me a River’ for proof of that). Throw in the rock ’n’ roll, some mischievous editing and an exuberant willingness to undergo a violent process of self-fracturing and you can see why everyone from John Waters to Jean-Luc Godard adored Tashlin.

‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ isn’t as bat-shit lunatic as the profoundly psychoceramic ‘Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?’ (1957) but, then again, ‘WSSRH?’ is a movie determined to destroy both itself, the very fabric of cinema and the audience’s minds. ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ has more of an emotional quality to it meaning we actually care and want Tom and Jerri to get together, and although Mansfield’s Jerri isn’t as comedically transcendent as her Rita Marlowe there’s the feeling of a real person beneath Jerri’s sashaying glide.

‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ is wonderful and one of the best films about rock ’n’ roll, sex and the human anatomy ever made. Although watch carefully and you’ll notice that, apart from the last ten minutes, there isn’t a single teenager in sight. The adults aren’t quite ready to give up all that fun to the youngsters just yet.