Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ***** (1953, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Norma Varden, Tommy Noonan, Taylor Holmes, Elliott Reid) – Classic Movie Review 915

Howard Hawks’s glorious 1953 Technicolor musical film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is perfectly tailored to the very special talents of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, seen at their enchanting best as singer gold-diggers Dorothy and Lorelei.

Anita Loos’s classic novel with its brittly witty, ultra-cynical and often hysterical tale Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of two sexy and charming contrasting gold-diggers, the archetypal dumb blonde Lorelei Lee and her astute brunette friend Dorothy Shaw, was turned into a Broadway hit musical with Jule Styne and Leo Robin songs.

Director Howard Hawks’s glorious 1953 Technicolor film version Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is perfectly tailored to the extraordinary and very special talents of Fifties favourites Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. They have great, enchanting chemistry together, and are seen at their very best as singer/ opportunists Dorothy and Lorelei, without any effort that may have taken place during the filming ever showing on screen.

The perennially insecure Monroe kept insisting on retakes despite approval of takes by Hawks. When the Fox studio bosses asked him how production could be sped up, he replied: ‘Three wonderful ideas: replace Marilyn, rewrite the script and make it shorter, and get a new director.’

Just two little girls from Little Rock, Lorelei and Dorothy take up a gig as lounge singers on a transatlantic cruise, working their way to Paris, and enjoying the company and favours of eligible men they meet. Lorelei’s fiancé Gus Esmond Jr (Tommy Noonan) sees the gals off on the boat to France. But his disapproving father (Taylor Holmes) sends along a private detective (Elliott Reid) to keep an eye on Lorelei. However, soon the private eye starts enjoying a shipboard romance with Monroe’s seductive Dorothy.

Eventually, the duo arrive in Paris, sill pursued by the private detective. In gay Paree, the heroines start up a new gig, working in a cabaret. There, a rich, besotted old man, a British titled sweetheart called Sir Francis ‘Piggy’ Beekman (Charles Coburn), makes Marilyn the gift of a diamond tiara.

That pleases her no end but understandably upsets Lady Beekman (Norma Varden) big time.

Among her many credits, Varden also plays Mrs Cunningham in Strangers on a Train and Frau Schmidt in The Sound of Music.

Monroe and Russell are absolutely fabulous, funny, charming and frankly just plain adorable. Coburn scores strongly in the warm-hearted comedy department and the support cast are ideally cast and expert. The songs are enchanting and evergreen, and surprise director Hawks, a man’s man film-maker if ever there was one, tip-toes through all the possible pitfalls and seems to be enjoying himself enormously, even if he apparently wasn’t. Somehow, he has kept control of the bubbling cauldron.

Marilyn confidently and alluringly sings the campy all-time great show tune classic ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’. This number was later re-shot in CinemaScope and it was finally screened in the Monroe tribute documentary Marilyn (1963).

Jane makes a lovely job of the strangely sexy ‘Ain’t There Anyone Here For Love’ (Hoagy Carmichael-Harold Adamson) appealing unnoticed to the musclemen who are only into themselves (and maybe each other) in the ship’s gym. In this sequence, Russell’s fall into the pool at the end was a happy accident.

There are three other essential songs in ‘Bye, Bye Baby’, ‘A Little Girl from Little Rock’ and ‘When Love Goes Wrong’.

Russell was the top-billed star of the movie. Monroe said later: ‘Jane Russell, she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde. She got $200,000 for it, and I got my $500 a week. But that to me was, you know, considerable.’ The property was bought as a vehicle for Betty Grable. But, after the success of Niagara (1953) with Monroe, Fox dumped Grable (who was earning around $150,000 a movie) for a cheaper, newer sex symbol.

The show opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 8 1949 and ran for 740 performances with Carol Channing as Lorelei.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was thought very risqué back in the Fifties and originally given an A certificate in Britain, but now of course it’s a U.

Though this was Russell’s only film with Monroe, they got along well. Monroe said: ‘She was, by the way, quite wonderful to me.’ Russell called Monroe ‘Blondie’ and was usually the only person who could coax Monroe out of her trailer to begin filming. Fox planned to re-team them in How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955) but Monroe didn’t like the script and refused the assignment, and it ended up starring Betty Grable and Sheree North.

Gwen Verdon coached the stars in their dance and walk – Monroe with less sex, Russell with more.

Steve Reeves appears uncredited as an Olympic Team Member, just before his feature film debut proper in Ed Wood’s Jail Bait (1954).

Also in the cast are George Winslow, Steven Geray, Marcel Dalio, Leo Mostovoy, Henri Letondal and Howard Wendell.

The disappointingly stodgy sequel, Gentlemen Marry Brunettes in 1955 stars Russell but Monroe is replaced as co-star by Jeanne Crain.

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