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| Director Howard Hawks |
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| Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell |
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| novelist Anita Loos |
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES B USA (91 mi) 1953 d: Howard Hawks
I can be smart when it’s important, but most men don’t like it. —Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe)
During the conservative era of Eisenhower’s America in the 1950’s, Douglas Sirk was offering his own subversive take on the “women’s picture,” using lurid symbolism and garish color schemes to reflect what’s going on under the surface in films like Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Written On the Wind (1956), drawing attention to the stereotypical and straight-jacketed roles of women in society, caught up in the material mindset of the American Dream while also accentuating the tragedy of believing in false ideals. Hollywood, however, was in the business of promoting those same consumerist ideals through its own overblown romanticism, where this film is the epitome of reinforcing the existing social order, where marrying a rich man was the answer to a woman’s prayers, as money, not love, was the overriding concern, without any apparent concerns that they could be viewed as a sex object or purchased as a commodity themselves. Perpetuating the stereotype that liberation comes in the form of a pocketbook, where economic stability supersedes all matters of love, the Hollywood mythmaking machine was busy at work creating larger-than-life figures on the screen, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell representing the industry’s two biggest sex symbols, where the cartoonish storyline is overlooked by the Technicolor musical extravaganza that is literally an escapist cinematic spectacle, adopted as a marketing strategy to compete against television audiences, offering a glittering allure that wasn’t available on those black and white television sets, where the spread of the new home medium was part of the post-war economic boom. As Hawks himself noted, “The girls were unreal, the story was unreal. We were working with complete fantasy.” Monroe’s undeniable sex appeal put glamour back into the movies on a large scale, where she epitomized the objectification of women in the 1950’s, as advertising campaigns for her movies echoed the selling of consumer goods, emphasizing the importance of appearance and obedience to male expectations, underscored by the title, where marriage was viewed as the ideal, with happiness revolving around choosing the right husband, where cinematic illusion deftly plays into the audience’s fantasies, reiterating the Cinderella fairy tale with the princess searching for the handsome prince. And Monroe does not disappoint, never disappearing behind the character, as what we see onscreen actually “is” Marilyn Monroe playing a sex kitten in all its exaggerated femaleness, with her signature breathy voice, where nearly all her subsequent roles are reiterations of this same sexually provocative character, while Jayne Mansfield’s blonde bombshell in Frank Tashlin’s THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT (1956) is almost a parody of Monroe in this film. The entire film may be seen through a voyeuristic lens, as these women are continually ogled and gawked at by men throughout the entire length of the picture, no matter the setting, yet these enterprising young women have learned to take advantage of their beauty and feminine sexuality, where having a voluptuous figure has its advantages, as they are literally on display as shiny ornaments in a fish bowl, where the film showcases them as sex objects like a prurient advertising campaign selling tickets for its own product, with Monroe already known as a pinup girl, while the film may as well be a billboard advertising for Hollywood itself. Released just a few months prior to the premiere of CinemaScope, what truly stands out is the movie’s shameless materialism, yet when these women exhibit a strong assertiveness and use their feminine guile to get what they want, acknowledging at one point, “If we aren’t able to empty his pockets between us, we aren’t worthy of the name Woman,” their sexual manipulation is equated to female enterprise leading into the postwar consumer landscape of the 50’s with its unquestioned acceptance of the full-fledged patriarchy of American capitalism. While it has its screwball comedy moments, much like Howard Hawks’ earlier film MONKEY BUSINESS (1952), this garish, veering-towards-camp musical never really comes across as a subversive satire of the American Dream, instead it blatantly peddles the product.
Adapted from the 1925 novel by Anita Loos, the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, authoring hundreds of Hollywood films in the 1910’s, it started as a series of short sketches published in serial installments by Harper’s Bazaar known as the “Lorelei stories,” written in the form of her diaries, revisiting the myth of the irresistible American blonde in the jazz age of the Roaring Twenties, who uses her “stupidity” and eroticism for her own benefit, where the magazine’s circulation quadrupled overnight, making her a millionaire and a celebrity, running as a Broadway play in 1926-27, followed by a 1928 silent comedy release under the same title directed by Malcolm St. Clair, which was something of a flop, where no copies are known to exist, so it is now considered a lost film. It was revised in a Broadway version starring Carol Channing in 1949, accentuating the entertainment aspect through elaborate musical production numbers, while the film release, with Loos as a script consultant, was the seventh highest-grossing film of 1953, eclipsing the popularity of the novel. The film doesn’t really stack up against the best song-and-dance musicals of the era, as the songs themselves are weak, never rising to the level of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) (1930), for instance, who could convincingly direct each song to the individualized fantasies of every man in the room, and what passes for dancing is more like choreographed movement that is intentionally tacky, as neither Russell nor Monroe could dance, with Hawks nowhere near the set, having no interest in directing large-scale musical numbers, turning those sequences over to choreographer Jack Cole and his assistant Gwen Verdon. The costumes designed by William Travilla are glamorously divine, working with Monroe on eight films together, best expressed in a rousing Marilyn Monroe showstopper near the end, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) -- (Movie Clip) Diamonds Are A... YouTube (4:26), where her celebrated pink evening gown, as well as gloves, jewelry, shoes, and hair were parodied by Madonna in an equally iconic music video in 1984, Madonna - Material Girl (Official Video) [HD] - YouTube (4:45), glorified again by Nicole Kidman in a more chaotic version with quick cuts in Baz Luhrman’s MOULIN ROUGE (2001), Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend (2001) HD - YouTube (2:42), both meant to evoke the sexuality of Monroe, but reinvented with a modernist sophistication. It’s surprising how much dance movement elevates the best musicals, whether it’s Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire or a host of others, as they tend to hold up over time, while those without it seem so much more inert and statuesque, feeling dated, relying so much more upon a script that may not always provide the saving grace, where this very much appears to be a product of the times. That said, what this film really established was the brilliance of Marilyn Monroe’s comic timing, initially perceived by the industry as just another “dumb blonde” (as initially written by Loos), which she accentuates with stereotypical exaggeration, where her archetypal Hollywood sex goddess actually helped to resuscitate the musical’s mainstream commercial and critical recovery in the 21st century, embodied by films like Moulin Rouge (2001) and Rob Marshall’s CHICAGO (2002), perhaps driven by nostalgia, but her delivery of some of the best lines may be the real surprise of the film, exemplified years later in what is arguably her best comic role in Billy Wilder’s madcap comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), followed not long afterwards by her final film and what many consider her greatest dramatic role opposite Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in John Huston’s desperately sad The Misfits (1961). But this musical is on the opposite spectrum, more of a zany spoof on male expectations, overtly playing to the male gaze, while countering that with something the audience is not expecting, turning into a female buddy movie, with Russell and Monroe playing best of friends without a hint of competitive rivalry, where their lack of formal education is replaced by firsthand experience, becoming a disorienting daydream of female empowerment, allowing the women to seemingly control their own destiny, so long as it fits within the safely conventional parameters of 1950 America. The underlying sexual ambiguity is an interesting component of the film, and may help explain why this is listed by none other than Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 10 favourite films of all time. It’s extremely touching to see the considerable care Russell takes in trying to protect the acutely shy young starlet from a director who had little patience for her anxieties, offering the maturity and wisdom of a big sister, often conveyed in overly protective wise cracks, but their lifelong friendship off the screen was equally genuine, though they never worked together again.
While the script adapted by Charles Lederer veers from the norm, what’s interesting is how underwritten all the male roles are, with most little more than buffoons, and how much more detailed the female relationship becomes, which is atypical of Hollywood films of the period, something not often seen before THELMA & LOUISE (1991). Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) are American showgirls (“from the wrong side of the tracks”) who appear in red sequin dresses to deliver the opening number, appearing even before the opening credits, Two Little Girls from Little Rock - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (HD) YouTube (2:48), emulated a decade later by two sisters, Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, in Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les demoiselles de Rochefort) (1967). As the two greatest sex symbols of the era, one blonde and the other a brunette, they couldn’t be more different, as the ditzy blonde Lorelei is angelic, even innocent-looking, with a restrained sexuality, while the more intellectually discerning Dorothy is bold and brash, whose sexuality is raw and sassy. Dorothy is more pragmatic, but Lorelei insists her brunette friend is dumb because she’s always falling for some good-looking guy without any consideration of his financial standing, with Dorothy suggesting Lorelei has “Novocaine in her lipstick,” as men always swoon after being kissed, while Lorelei in turn warns Dorothy in her own affectionate, yet convoluted way, “I want you to find happiness and stop having fun.” Rather than resist their female objectification by men, they instead accentuate all their sensual qualities to draw even more attention to themselves, actually parodying the male stereotype of a sex symbol by presenting a convincing illustration of feminine seduction as illusion, performing one artificial female stereotype after another, intentionally feeding into the audience’s own insatiable fantasy of beauty, which of course Hollywood helped invent. Russell was the headliner, loaned out from RKO by Howard Hughes, earning ten times the salary of Monroe, but it was Monroe who was given the climactic musical number, coming out of this film a first-rate star, singing all of her own vocals except the operatic high notes introducing the signature song, which were dubbed by infamous ghost singer Marni Nixon. The tagline for the film was “The Two M-M-Marvels Of Our Age In The Wonder Musical Of The World!” They are opposites when it comes to marriage, with one guided by money and the other by a healthy skepticism of love, as Lorelei is only interested in a man’s wealth, like her millionaire fiancé Gus (Tommy Noonan in a role originally meant for Cary Grant), a hopelessly naïve and prudish man who can provide for all her financial needs, where lavish presents are a substitute for real love. Dorothy, on the other hand, prefers men who are handsome and charming, and is more concerned about the sparks of attraction, showing no real interest in their wealth, which is immediately established in their backstage rapport which confirms their character and their motivations, with Lorelei acting the part of a sophisticated lady, intending to marry Gus in France, while Dorothy is a straight-shooter, where her lines feel more like sarcastic zingers. The chink in the armor is Gus’s father, as he despises Lorelei, suspecting she’s little more than a gold digger, looking for any hint of scandal to call off the marriage, and forbids them from traveling together on the Atlantic ocean liner to Europe, with Dorothy filling in as her chaperone. Luckily for her, the all-male U.S. Olympic team is onboard, which quickly draws her eye, fascinated by the anatomy of the male physique, which escalates into a snappy musical number as she wanders around the men on exercise apparatus and eventually a pool, with homoerotic implications in their flesh-colored attire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) -- (Movie Clip) Anyone Here ... YouTube (3:54), all but ignoring Dorothy as she takes a tumble into the pool, which was purely accidental, but like a trooper she remained in character, so they kept the shot.
Unbeknownst to either woman, Gus’s father has hired a private investigator in the form of Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid) to watch Lorelei on the journey and report back anything suspicious. As a diversion, he snoozes up to Dorothy, pretending he’s a rich playboy and that it’s all accidental, but his eye is on Lorelei, hoping to catch her in an act of indiscretion. In one of those swanky, luxury liner cocktail hours with guests in formal attire, Lorelei happens upon the elderly owner of a diamond mine, Sir Francis “Piggy” Beekman (Charles Coburn), and her eyes light up in dollar signs, while his face turns into a giant diamond. Despite being old enough to be her grandfather, and married to boot, traveling with his wife (Norma Varden), Lorelei grows fascinated by Lady Beekman’s diamond tiara, even trying it on for size, where her reaction is priceless, “I just love finding new places to wear diamonds.” This gargantuan piece of jewelry becomes the object of Lorelei’s obsessive fascination, using her flirtatious charm to spend more and more time with Beekman, who’s of course flattered by her attention, telling him what he wants to believe, feeding into his own illusion about himself in order to get what she wants, eventually convincing him to actually “give” it to her, thoroughly dismissing the objections and concerns of his wife, which becomes the narrative thread for the rest of the picture, with Lorelei refusing to give it back, even after being accused of being a thief, Marilyn Monroe And Jane Russell In "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" - " I'm Going To Keep It" YouTube (3:27). Dorothy discovers Malone peeping on her friend, discovering his real motives and sees him for the lout he is, but his persistence with her pays off, and after a surprising kiss, she can be heard uttering “I think I’m falling in love with that slob.” Even after ending up being down and out in Paris, thrown out of their hotel without a dollar to their name, they do what they do best, return to the stage, becoming immediate star attractions, with tragedy turning optimistically to fortune, yet there’s that little matter of the diamond tiara to contend with, turning the judicial system into a theatrical farce, becoming a mockery of the presumed superiority of European values (with its rich historical and literary history), as the brash Americans aren’t what they seem, turning this into something of an economics lesson. Exhibiting an innate talent for American entrepreneurship, coming soon after the end of The Marshall Plan and Postwar Economic Recovery, which rebuilt a war-torn Europe, this has an all’s well that ends well storyline, going through a circuitous route to get there, with a few surprising twists, eventually coming face to face with Gus’s father, who’s ready to send Lorelei to the slammer, but she has a way of twisting even the most unpersuasive of men around her little finger, and this one’s no different, as she seems to have a way with wealthy men, speaking their own language, as all she really wants is what they’ve already got. Who could argue with that? The double wedding bells of the finale seems overly contrived, resembling a Hollywood fairy tale, as these thoroughly bland men are simply no match for the complexities of women possessing such unique insight into the psychology of men, thoroughly outwitting and outfoxing them on every occasion, and while it fits the happy ending movie format, one might “not” view this as a happy ending, but rather a dismal one that presents a darker view of marriage where women are trapped within the sexist 50’s demands of conformity and gender expectations. This is a dated musical fantasia that best exemplifies the talents of these two resolute women, which even took the movie studios by surprise, as they were never able to recapture this same chemistry of female camaraderie, using their looks and sexual charisma to have fun at the expense of men, exhibiting a potent form of power that is still overlooked today.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - Video Dailymotion YouTube (1:31:25)
