Does Anyone Remember Laughter...?

What to do on a hot, muggy Chicago evening? Go to the movies! The Lovely Carla and I went to the Gene Siskel Film Center (the classiest movie theater experience in the City) last night and time-tripped back to 1957, to watch Frank Tashlin's satiric masterpiece, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" What a great, funny, insightful, ridiculous, glorious film. Perfect. It stars (improbably) Tony Randall, who tackles the role of his career. Strangely the Siskel center was packed, (usually the Lovely C. and I find ourselves with the theater virtually to ourselves, maybe a film student or two, a guy with a beret, a bag lady, and a few disheveled lonesters), and the audience ate the movie up like a tasty box of salty, butter-laden popcorn. A spot-on comedy where the laughs come in raucous bunches. It's timeless and a product of it's time, (it's about the Ad business on Madison Av. in New York, a distant land, circa the Eisenhower era, when the American Empire was at it's pinnacle of materialistic, consumer mad, success-obsessed, glory.) Jayne Mansfield playing a character based on Marilyn Monroe is a revelation, in all her busty, lusty, curvaceous splendor. Anyway, the movie is about the absurdly capricious road to success (Ad Execs lusting after the golden key to the executive washroom!). It also shows us that the material, ad-based, pop culture machine that was really revving up in the 50's and is now in it's apotheosis stage, is all a ridiculous, hollow hoax (Oh we do so love our gadgets!). Who's picture of success are we willing to give our lives up for? What to make of it all? Laugh your ass off as Tony Randall prances around his office lair! Did I mention Groucho Marx makes a cameo! We're even left with an uplifting moral to the story: "success is the art of being happy." Thank you Frank Tashlin...