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29 Q4 2016 / CINEMONTAGE THIS QUARTER IN FILM HISTORY the National Board of Review's critique of the finished film in the January 1957 issue of Films in Review: "…a showcase for leading purveyors of the jungle caterwauling known as Rock 'n' Roll, and thereby a cultural debilitator our descendants won't forgive us for (let us hope)." Although some of the movie's songs and performers can be dismissed and justly forgotten, most of them show that Tashlin and the studio were making a real effort to convey the vitality of the new music genre. Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Platters, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent all have been enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whether audiences at the time realized it or not, their performances, along with those of the Treniers and Abbey Lincoln, offered a glimpse into the roots of rock music. The music of the black performers — Richard, Domino, the Treniers and the Platters — was rhythm and blues, created for black audiences and now relabeled Rock 'n' Roll for white audiences. Shrewdly, the movie featured Lincoln, wearing the same dress worn by Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), singing a traditional gospel song with a big band arrangement to give a nod to the origins of African- American music. White performers Cochran and Vincent were major virtuosos of rockabilly. A creative mix of white country and western with black rhythm and blues seeded by Hank Williams, rockabilly also produced giants like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Shooting Vincent and His Blue Caps' performance of "Be-Bop-A-Lula" in a rehearsal room, Tashlin makes a sly commentary on music history — hanging prominently on a wall directly behind Vincent singing is a large framed portrait of opera composer Richard Wagner. Popular jazz pianist and songwriter Bobby Troup, famous for the standard, "Route 66," also made contributions, both authentic and satiric, to the movie's music. He wrote the title song, "The Girl Can't Help It," and created the song that the film's fictional racketeer writes to make his girlfriend a star — a tune about the gangster's life in the penitentiary called "Rock Around the Rock Pile." (Was it just coincidence that MGM hired Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in April 1957 to write the songs for a Presley vehicle released later that year called Jailhouse Rock?) While the movie points up the relationship between black and white music, the performers never play together, as if maintaining a "separate but equal" policy in entertainment. All the musicians, black and white, are seen performing only to all-white audiences. In the enormous dance hall of the climactic Rock 'n' Roll Jubilee scene, Domino and the Platters sing to a horde of white couples dancing; and the white kids are all boogying as much as they can — like black dancers did a decade earlier to Duke Ellington's band in the all- The Girl Can't Help It. 20th Century-Fox CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26 The Girl Can't Help It. 20th Century-Fox/ Photofest The Girl Can't Help It. Charles Connor collection