Title: The Girl Can’t Help It
Year: 1956
Director: Frank Tashlin (Son of Paleface)
Writer: Frank Tashlin and Herbert Baker
Stars: Tom Ewell (The Seven Year Itch), Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O’Brien (D.O.A.)

The Story: A down-on-his-luck press agent is ordered to make a singing star out of a gangster’s voluptuous girl, under pain of death. Unfortunately, she can’t sing a do-re-mi to save her life. But then the gangster discovers a wild new sound that breaks all the rules. If she can’t make it as a lounge singer, maybe she can try this new-fangled “rock-n-roll”. But now there’s one more problem: the agent and the singer have fallen in love.

Why It’s Great: Both the presence of Mansfield (the poor man’s Marilyn Monroe) and wall-to-wall rock-n-roll soundtrack made this movie look like a quickie exploitation picture, so it took people a while to realize how great it is. Only in recent years have audiences accepted that Tashlin was one of the funniest directors of the ’50s and Mansfield was actually a sly comedienne who was in on the joke. Tashlin was the only director to successfully make the jump from directing Warner Brothers cartoons to making live-action movies, and the secret of his success was to keep the exact same style. His features have the same anarchy, expressionism, and post-modern glee of the best Daffy Duck shorts.

Three more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan.