Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (play)
| Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? | |
|---|---|
| Written by | George Axelrod |
| Characters | Rita Marlowe George MacCauley Michael Freeman Irving LaSalle Harry Kaye Bronk Brannigan Masseur A Secretary (see Script Variations below) |
| Date premiered | October 13, 1955 |
| Subject | A Faustian comedy about Hollywood |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Setting | The sitting room of Rita's Marlowe's suite in the St. Regis Hotel in New York City and the office of Rita Marlowe Productions in Hollywood (see Script Variations below) |
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is an original stage comedy in three acts and four scenes by George Axelrod. After a try-out run at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston from 26 September 1955, it opened at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on 13 October, starring Jayne Mansfield, Walter Matthau and Orson Bean. Directed by the author and produced by Jule Styne, it closed on 3 November 1956 after 444 performances.
The play is a Faustian comedy about a fan magazine writer who sells his soul to the Devil (in the guise of a literary agent) to become a successful screenwriter. The character of Rita Marlowe (played by Jayne Mansfield) is a vapid blonde sex symbol, an exaggerated lampoon of Marilyn Monroe (who had starred the previous year in the film version of Axelrod's play The Seven Year Itch). The surname Marlowe is an homage to 16th century playwright Christopher Marlowe, who wrote the 1604 drama The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, the plot of which served as the inspiration for Axelrod's play.
The 1957 film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? utilized the title of the play and the character of Rita Marlowe (with Mansfield repeating her stage role) but little else. The story was changed to a satire on television advertising and Tony Randall starred as Rockwell P Hunter, a character who never appears in the play.
George Axelrod's phenomenal success with the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch had made him an overnight celebrity, a phenomenon he explored in his 1953 'comedy documentary' Confessions of a Nervous Man, which was broadcast as part of the CBS-TV anthology series Studio One, with Art Carney playing him. According to Axelrod's script, he was afraid to write a second play because its failure would make him an overnight has-been.
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