Director Frank Tashlin has finally found an appreciative audience with adventurous film fans, but the charms of his glorious style of filmmaking are unknown to the makers of modern ‘comedies’ that do anything for a gross-out laugh. When Tashlin gets a mention it’s usually in conjunction with the films he directed for Jerry Lewis, but he’s even wilder on his own where he can express his oddball sex fantasies. His fingerprints are unmistakable on four decades’ worth of screen comedy, from several dozen classic animated Warner Bros. cartoons to work that established or extended the screen personalities of the likes of Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Tony Randall and Doris Day. Beginning as a teenaged cartoonist who signed his work ‘Tash,’ Tashlin was a joke powerhouse who retained his graphic sensibilities when he moved to the big screen. His best-known Lewis & Martin film Artists and Models combined his love of cartooning with an equally developed appetite for glamorous women. The Lieutenant Wore Skirts tried to turn Sheree North into a backup for Marilyn Monroe, while the almost abstract The Girl Can’t Help It makes Jayne Mansfield into a plastic sex object in a crazy culture dominated by rock ‘n’ roll.
Elegance isn’t a word that comes to mind when describing Tashlin, as his comedies seem to seek out new avenues of sight-gag vulgarity. The protagonists in his sex comedies tend to be emasculated males like Lewis, and over-aged would-be Lotharios like Terry-Thomas. Most of his screenplays dance around taboo subject matter, somehow steering clear of utter tastelessness (and Production Code censure). Tashlin didn’t write 1954’s Susan Slept Here but its script closely adheres to his personal preferences. The touchy topic this time is a romance between a nearly middle-aged screenwriter and a 17 year-old runaway, a wildcat in a ponytail and blue jeans. RKO’s ad campaign for the glossy Technicolor production never brings up the phrase, ‘Jail Bait.’ The script did go through several rounds at the Code Office, which expressed concern about ‘possibly offensive’ material.
The show is partly narrated by an Oscar statuette earned by writer Mark Christopher (Dick Powell). Oscar’s first remark is to envy another statuette tightly clutched by a starlet in a low-cut gown. Mark has quit his studio job to freelance and lives in a swank Hollywood high-rise with his support team, typist Maude Snodgrass (Glenda Farrell) and the cheerful Georgette (Maidie Norman), who serves as maid, housekeeper and cook. Mark’s old Navy pal Virgil (Alvy Moore) has an ill-defined role as Mark’s general gofer. Other than drinking liquor, the main activity around the house/office seems to be advising Mark on his love life. Mark’s Christmas Eve dinner plans with his fianceé Isabella (Anne Francis) are interrupted when two friendly cops arrive with the underage Susan Beauregard Landis (Debbie Reynolds) in tow. Arrested for vagrancy and disturbing the peace, Susan will probably have to spend a month in jail. But the cops know that Mark is looking for inspiration for a script, and suggest that he keep her for a couple of days.
After realizing that she has not been shanghaied for illicit purposes, Susan eventually warms to Mark, whose entourage becomes concerned that he may cross the line into an illegal relationship. The furious Isabella does her best to break things up. Realizing that he can’t let Susan go to jail, Mark instead marries her with the intention of leaving her un-kissed and undamaged for a quick annulment. Virgil babysits Susan while Mark’s lawyer tries to get her to sign the matrimonial quit-claim papers. But Maude helps awaken Susan’s true feelings — she’s in love and wants to make the marriage real. While Mark is away writing in a mountain cabin, the word spreads that Susan is pregnant… and Mark suspects that Virgil might be the father.
Susan Slept Here floats some pretty outlandish content for a slick color production made at a time when movie sex had to be kept under the carpet. The central tension comes from the sexual awakening of a bobbysoxer infatuated with a big-deal guy in the movies. Dick Powell’s facial expressions, coupled with some racy dialogue, make no bones about Mark Christopher’s sexual activities. He’s avidly pursued by Anne Francis, a delightfully stunning playgirl’s playgirl. Her Isabella is a Senator’s daughter, a man-eater who’s already chewed through several husbands. And although Debbie Reynolds’ precocious teen is nobody’s idea of a juvenile delinquent, she develops a rather ravenous appetite for those physical pleasures she’s not yet sampled. The dialogue is sharp and Tashlin doesn’t sidestep the sex tension by having characters waggle their eyebrows or hoot “Oo-la-la.” We really wonder how Mark is going to keep Susan out of his bed.
Susan Slept Here shows Tashlin an expert at juggling Production Code no-no’s. The sincere emotional content is balanced by a weird comic sense that comes straight from the Looney Tunes. Powell lip-synchs the terrible dialogue from a movie playing on the TV, to an odd visual effect, while Debbie Reynolds strikes fairly hilarious faces to mock Isabella in Mark’s home movies. The two stars make an interesting pair. Mark is a more relaxed version of Dick Powell’s cynical film noir characters, a strong and understanding guy too secure to act defensive when his friends find him in compromised situations with Susan. Tashlin’s original choice was Robert Mitchum. Susan is of course the unsinkable Debbie Reynolds, an innocent Junior Miss on the outside and a Sherman Tank on the inside. Her scream is strong enough to burst a Christmas ornament. When Susan puts her mind to snagging Mark for her own, we know that poor Isabella hasn’t a prayer; she’ll be knocked off the same way Debbie’s Kathy Selden demolished Lina Lamont. Reynolds’ acting is never natural but her professional skills are formidable indeed: Tashlin’s gentle farce is a perfect fit for this powerhouse that played innocent young things almost into her thirties.
What the above description doesn’t prepare the viewer for is Susan Slept Here’s pictorial qualities, which do indeed resemble reality filtered through the graphic sense of an animated cartoon. RKO’s ace cameraman Nicholas Musuraca (better known for his B&W noir work) shoots Tashlin’s sexy fantasy as if every shot were a special effect. Every Technicolor hue pops, giving Reynolds ‘chroma appeal’ — her blonde hair and blue eyes almost leap off the screen. The sultry babe next door (Mara Lane) looks as if she stepped out of a four-color illustration in Playboy magazine. Mark’s designer apartment might be the model for predatory wolves everywhere.
Tashlin favors dynamic angles, shooting from floor level when Susan practices her golf putts, and letting characters swoop into close-up from the middle distance. The gags tease at sex, but not as strongly as a Tex Avery cartoon — after listening to a romantic record, Susan cools down by sticking her head in the refrigerator! A simple close-up of Anne Francis in designer eyewear is a thing of beauty, an iconic ’50s image. It’s as if Tashlin understood ’50s retro before the concept of retro-ism had been conceived. The colorful costumes and distinctive lighting leap to yet another level of stylization when Susan dreams of losing Mark to Isabella, who appears as a four-armed spider-woman. In the dream, Susan finds herself reduced to Thumbelina size and locked in a virtual gilded cage. Cartoonish dream sequences like this turn up in vehicles for a number of ’50s stars, like Danny Kaye and Donald O’Connor, but there’s no comparison. If Tashlin didn’t design the sequence in detail, he certainly supervised it. I usually hate musical fantasies of this kind — Doris Day suffered through her share — but this one is splendid.
A few of the plot contrivances are trifling but the basic emotional thrust of Susan Slept Here is sound. Sidekick supporting actors Glenda Farrell and Alvy Moore cease being grating as the movie edges toward a warm & fuzzy finish. The romantic resolution is highly questionable, when Susan shows that she’s learned to be suitable wife material by learning how to mix drinks and taking up various outdoor sports (imitating Isabella, actually). The most important adjustment, never voiced but certainly communicated, is that Susan can now fill out a strapless gown like her sophisticated competition. Here it’s just standard women’s business, but a few pictures later in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? insecurity over the decade’s obsession with big breasts becomes a major issue when the sweet, relatively flat-chested Betsy Drake doesn’t ‘measure up.’ Susan also has a scene in the office of a headshrinker, who immediately diagnoses Mark’s romantic ills. Perhaps Frank Tashlin’s vulgar obsessions don’t seem offensive because we sense that he’s honestly working out his private sex fantasies. I mean, just look at Dick Powell’s necktie in the original poster (below)…
Everybody looks great in Technicolor. Anne Francis is a knockout. Maidie Norman is so pretty, it now seems even more cruel for Robert Aldrich to have let Bette Davis kill her in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Although Ellen Corby is only on screen for a few seconds, serving Susan strawberries and pickles, Nicholas Musuraca makes her close-up a thing of beauty as well. Susan Slept Here expresses the good side of retro ’50s culture nostalgia. Tashlin even finds room for a brief star cameo by Red Skelton.
