This past December I watched the Beatles Anthology with my Dad. Featuring heavily in one of the first discs is the importance of a film called “The Girl Can’t Help It.” Specifically, both Lennon and McCartney cite it as being really inspiring to them.
So I put it on my netflix queue and forgot about it. This week it arrived and I watched it, and it blew my mind.
Blew my mind in the best way ever!
Watching the Girl Can’t Help It was like hearing Os Mutantes for the first time, or eating your first oreo. You know perfection when you find it.
“The Girl Can’t Help It is a 1956 comedy/musical film, starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, and Edmond O’Brien…
The movie was originally intended as a Hollywood screen-vehicle for the American sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, with the subplot being a satire of teenagers and their rock ‘n’ roll music. The unintended result is the “most potent” celebration of rock music ever captured on film.”
If you’ve never seen it, some kind soul has uploaded the whole thing to youtube.
Here’s part one:
Seeing it this low res doesn’t do the film justice at all. It’s totally worth owning, and I say that about very few things.
So, “Girl Can’t Help It” comes out in ’56 in the US, then makes it across the pond to England the following year, where it runs smack into a fledgling Rock & Roller named John Winston Lennon.
Imagine a 17 year old John Lennon sitting in the darkness of a Liverpudlian cinema, and watching Eddie Cochran perform “20 Flight Rock.” It’s been said that seeing his heroes live and in color onscreen was what gave John the confidence to truly dedicate himself to rock and roll.
Here’s the Eddie Cochran performance. A true classic…
It was “20 Flight Rock”, (specifically Eddie Cochran’s version) that a fifteen year old James Paul McCartney performed as an audition to gain entry into the Quarrymen, Lennon’s first band.
Here’s Sir Paul telling the story and playing the song:
The Girl Can’t Help It’s entry into British consciousness is responsible for as many new bands being formed as the Ramones UK tour 20 years later, which inspired the creation of such bands as the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Damned, Generation X, and Siouxsie Sioux.
Seems hordes of young Brits saw GCHI and ran home to start skiffle and rock bands, forming the base for the British Invasion which began seven years later.
The Girl Can’t Help It is one of those intense cultural touchstones like Singin’ in the Rain, where its influence is too massive to quantify. Seeing it, you recognize so many bits of visual shorthand and imagery from the music video world. With scorching performances by Fats Domino, Gene Vincent and His Bluecaps, Little Richard (who sings the title track,) Abbey Lincoln, and many others GCHI could really make a case for being the first Rock & Roll Concert film.
And the entire film is shot in the most ridiculously creamy color! The director Frank Tashlin had worked previously as an animator, so GCHI has an amazing cartoon-like quality to it. Who Framed Roger Rabbit owes a huge nod to this film.
Plus it’s got Jayne Mansfield in it!
Isn’t it amazing to see how inspiration flows around, sloshing all over the place?
Check this film out, it will make you happy and drop some science into your headpiece.
We could all use more science in our headpieces.
Love!
-Jackson
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