New Play in Manhattan

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (by George Axelrod) is a satiric free-for-all on Hollywood and sex by the author of The Seven Year Itch. There is a blonde, Marilyn-Monroeish siren, a bland Hollywood agent with satanic powers, an illiterate Hollywood producer, an idling playwright who wrote a sock first play and can't get on with a second. And there is a shy, not very bright young fan-magazine writer who, by selling his soul in 10% slices to the agent, becomes a modern-day Faust.

At 10% a throw, the Faustling gets himself a fortune, wins the siren, judos her bruiser husband through a window, captures an Oscar, contrives a 1958 Pulitzer Prize script for the playwright. This unearned future honor brings the playwright to his senses; shouting "Excelsior " he first saves young Faust from Hell, then saves himself from Hollywood.

There is an entertaining idea in uniting a 20th-century Faust with 20th Century-Fox. And Will Success, at its best, produces fresher, funnier and coarser lines than anything in The Seven Year Itch. Playwright Axelrod offers sex on the rocks and Hollywood in the raw, coaxes a few new laughs out of agents and Oscars, contrives short vaudevilles on such Hollywood problems as how to treat Boy-Meets-Girl stories. Jayne Mansfield makes an amusing siren and Martin Gabel a particularly skillful agent.

But as playwriting, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? often badly slithers; and as satire, it is too often a mere family joke. More surprisingly, the sap in Playwright Axelrod's spoofing suddenly turns to syrup. Kidding the blonde siren at the start, Will Success offers a lowdown but lively Monroe Doctrine; championing the playwright at the end, it provides a weirdly solemn Declaration of Independence. (By this time, in Hollywood plays, integrity should be seen and not heard.) And in all the final putting things to rights, there is no trace of irony. If Hollywood filmed Faust, Faust might be expected to beat the rap. If he beats the rap in a play at Hollywood's expense, surely the tongue should make the cheek at least faintly protrude.

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