GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES

TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX, 1953 | COLOR (TECHNICOLOR), 91 MINUTES

DIRECTOR: HOWARD HAWKS PRODUCER: SOL C. SIEGEL SCREENPLAY: CHARLES LEDERER, BASED ON THE MUSICAL PLAY BY JOSEPH FIELDS, FROM THE NOVEL BY ANITA LOOS SONGS: JULE STYNE (MUSIC) AND LEO ROBIN (LYRICS), HOAGY CARMICHAEL (MUSIC) AND HAROLD ADAMSON (LYRICS) CHOREOGRAPHER: JACK COLE STARRING: JANE RUSSELL (DOROTHY SHAW), MARILYN MONROE (LORELEI LEE), CHARLES COBURN (SIR FRANCIS BEEKMAN), ELLIOTT REID (ERNIE MALONE), TOMMY NOONAN (GUS ESMOND JR.), GEORGE WINSLOW (HENRY SPOFFORD III), MARCEL DALIO (MAGISTRATE), TAYLOR HOLMES (MR. ESMOND SR.), NORMA VARDEN (LADY BEEKMAN), GEORGE CHAKIRIS (DANCER [UNCREDITED])

Two entertainers go to Paris. One is a blonde who loves diamonds, the other a brunette who likes men.

A classic musical, unquestionably, with a few twists. The standard virtues of song, dance, and eye-catching production are all present, yet the most powerful charge comes from the iconography. Marilyn Monroe is at her most incandescent, and Jane Russell is pretty sensational, too.

Anita Loos’s tale of the winsome gold-digger Lorelei Lee had pretty much defined the Jazz Age, and the Broadway show made a star of Carol Channing. For the movies, the 1920s setting would be jettisoned along with most of the plot and songs. Normally, such alterations are the main reason some people loathe the notion of a movie version of a hit show. Here, somehow, the changes are not so much distorting or reductive as they are transformational. With a great comedy director in Hawks, and a fine choreographer, Jack Cole, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes becomes its own entity. It is, in a way, one of the first “reimagined” musical adaptations, like Cabaret (1972) or Chicago (2002). Essentially, it’s a movie about friendship, with Monroe and Russell as the kind of pals whose bond can withstand and endure anything, up to and including jail, blackmail, and an Olympic team. Apart from similar career choices and figures, they have little in common, yet always maintain their mutual devotion and respect. Dorothy has seen it all, Lorelei is a master of faux-innocent manipulation, and in tandem they form one of the great teams in all film.