"Battle of the Blondes" Round One: Marilyn Monroe vs. Jayne Mansfield

I'm not going to do reviews for Battle of the Blondes the way I am for Summer Under the Stars, but I am watching two films for each night, one for each actress featured, and for the Monroe and Mansfield showdown I watched Niagara (Monroe) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Mansfield) -- which, right off the bat, I'll acknowledge is not really a fair fight. Niagara is a middling film at best, really only worth watching for Monroe's presence and the impressive shots of the Falls, while Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a clever satire featuring Mansfield in a part she had honed on stage before bringing to the screen. If I'm judging film-versus-film or even performance-versus-performance, Mansfield wins, hands down.

To compare Monroe and Mansfield on a broader basis is trickier, though, because they're not actually as much alike as they initially seem (or appear). I can't explain Marilyn Monroe any better than anyone else can, but she was an original, whatever she was, and it's true that the Jayne Mansfield we know probably couldn't have existed without Monroe preceding her, because part of Mansfield's persona is a second-rate Monroe impersonation -- but not her entire persona. Mansfield sometimes seems like she's purposely parodying Monroe to get laughs and other times seems like she's just copying Monroe outright; the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, especially in her earlier films like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The main difference between Monroe and Mansfield is in that ambiguity: Monroe was an enigma, but she was also always herself and entirely free of irony; her depth came from the way she combined sex and naivete in a way no one has really been able to replicate since she died. Modern viewers sometimes complain that they want to hear Monroe speak in her "real voice" or play someone other than "Marilyn Monroe," but eventually we all have to accept that she either wouldn't or couldn't, because the line between Marilyn and Norma Jean dissolved early in her career, if it ever existed in the first place.

No one ever has to wonder what Jayne Mansfield's real voice sounded like; she used it just as often as she cooed and squeaked and sang her words. She modulates her voice in a way Monroe never does, switching from normal to husky to girlish in the span of one sentence, and then back again, parodying herself, parodying Monroe, parodying the idea of a blond bombshell in general. We know she's playing a part, and she knows she's playing a part, too, which is probably why every inch of her appearance is more than Monroe: her breasts are bigger, her hair is bigger, her makeup is thicker. Her brain might well have been bigger, too -- she claimed to have an IQ of 163, and who knows if that's true, but she seems more intelligent than Monroe, delivering her lines with a winky quality entirely absent from Monroe's body of work. Where Monroe was a blank slate, Mansfield has activity behind her eyes, which can be both a blessing and curse: she seems cruder than Monroe because she knows every angle of what she's doing, but she's also never pitiful...because she knows every angle of what she's doing.

In the end, it's hard to pick a winner between Monroe and Mansfield because their effect on screen is entirely different. Rock Hunter aside, Monroe is the easy choice because she had a greater number of good roles and because, well, she's Marilyn Monroe, but to hand her the win over Mansfield for those reasons is no more fair than to judge her solely on Niagara. To compare the two of them really is like comparing apples and oranges, and I have a feeling most of the showdowns in Battle of the Blondes are going to feel the same way, which is why I'm going to just stick to talking about the actresses rather than picking winners. Chances are good I'll just end up picking my personal favorites anyway. I will, however, gladly rate the movies, and since I've already spent enough time comparing Monroe and Mansfield, suffice it to say that Niagara is an ill-defined noir with better scenery than storytelling, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? a genuinely funny comedy about the advertising world during the late fifties, like Mad Men with a good dose of levity. Skip Niagara unless you're a big Monroe fan (or a big fan of the Falls); see Rock Hunter if you simply want to be entertained.

Niagara: C+
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?: A