It’s not one of the great musicals of all time…but it’s a fun one.
The plot is silly, but it works. The songs are cute and well staged. The dialogue works. Marilyn Monroe is a perfect Lorelei Lee (I cannot picture Carol Channing doing the role. I know it happened, I just can’t picture it) and Jane Russell (who had top billing) was great as Dorothy. The direction was dead on. The film looks good all the way through.
And I just really like watching the movie.
I hope everyone enjoyed it.
Wow.
Anyone read Jonathan Rosenbaum’s deconstruction of this movie? Very very impressive. Haven’t read it in a while, but it’s a pretty convoluted piece of criticism. Bit headache making. But convincining. He places it, IIRC, among the ten best films of all time.
Anyway, the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a lot darker, more satirical, than the movie, and it’s one of my favorite frequent re-reads.
Even by my standards, that is pushing it.
Great movie. Good performances all around, excellent numbers. “Well, I was being the deer, and Piggie was the anaconda…”
How funny. I couldn’t remember which movie was the next selection for the Society, but I borrowed the correct title anyway. I’m pretty sure I’d never seen any movie with Marilyn Monroe in it before, but now I am likely to see more.
It was also pretty daring for its time. The dance scene in the gym with the males in bathing suits was a pretty risque take-off on every prior musical ever made, with females in bathing suits.
We actually showed this at my mother’s old-folks home a few months ago, and they loved it too. The sex is implicit, not explict, and it’s very funny.
I always get a laugh too.
One of my faves! A very entertaining musical with sparkling wit and memorable songs. Marilyn Monroe is wonderful, but Jane Russell -Va Va Va Voom!!! this gentleman prefers brunettes!
Here’s one of those stories that I want to tell despite feeling that it’s a bit too personal to share on the Internet, so I’ll probably end up mangling it. Oh well, here goes anyway.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is the favorite musical, and perhaps the all-time favorite movie, of someone close to me. A couple of years back she suffered a severe head injury, and while she eventually managed a pretty amazing recovery it was a long and difficult road. For a long time she couldn’t respond coherently to questions, couldn’t recognize her family, couldn’t even give her own name and age correctly.
However, when shown a photo of herself dressed up as Lorelei Lee, she was able to launch into a shaky, slightly inaccurate, but all things considered fairly decent rendition of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”:
Square cut or pear-shaped,
These rocks don’t know their shape,
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend!
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that, down to the one word she got wrong. It was one of the first sure signs that the person I knew was still “in there”.