The Girl Can't Help It

The quintessential '50s rock film, containing legendary appearances from Fats Domino, the Platters, Little Richard and Gene Vincent among its seventeen numbers, though the greatest musical moment is perhaps Eddie Cochran belting out '20 Flight Rock'. The story is a fairly biting satire on the PR worlds of rock and advertising, with Ewell as a press agent and Mansfield as a dumb blonde who rockets to stardom after imitating a prison siren on a rock record. This is the film in which Tashlin made Mansfield hold two milk bottles next to her boobs for a momentary visual gag; and he was capable of even crueller humour, as the sequel Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? proved.