Rent Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Diamonds, Wit, and a Few Missing Teeth - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes review by griggs

Everything was clicking for me until the Blu-ray started skipping — and it was maddening, because the film’s best bits really do sparkle. You can feel the studio sanding every wink until it gleams, and that’s both the pleasure and the problem. The “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number is the peak: Monroe holds the screen even while stuck in the “ditzy blonde” mould the world unfairly cemented around her. Russell brings the warmth, the wit, and the sense she’s in on the joke. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is bright, bouncy, and a bit thin — I was entertained, but I wanted it to dig in deeper, satirise sharper, and let their double-act run wilder.

Musical Frou-Frou. - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes review by Steve

Musical version of Anita Loos' durable 1925 novel, via the Broadway stage. It's updated from the jazz age to the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell are two showgals from Little Rock, Arkansas. Monroe is a gold-digger, Russell a sort of she-wolf. They sail to Paris with the red blooded boys from the US olympics team, and an elderly gent (Charles Coburn) who owns a goldmine.

Predictable chaos ensues. Neither Monroe nor Russell were dancers and they kind of wiggle and sway through the scenes in synchronicity, singing half a dozen pretty good musical numbers, including the legendary showstopper, Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.

There's a very funny script by Charles Lederer, heavy with innuendo, and Howard Hawks is a legendary comedy director.  But the film shines because of the two stars. They make dazzling, glittery magic, particularly Monroe, playing a sort of distorted femininity.  Its look probably influenced the future of drag more than mainstream chic. 

 It's completely weightless, and its values are materialistic, mercenary and soulless. But it is hilarious, irreverent and unique. It made Monroe a major star as the good time blonde. What she does here, I'm not sure it's acting at all, or even sexy. But as far as the Hollywood comedy is concerned, she heralds the hedonistic, consumerist '50s.