Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Trivia
Marilyn Monroe reportedly suggested the line "I can be smart when it's important, but most men don't like it."
This was Jane Russell's only film with Marilyn Monroe. They got along well. According to Russell's 1985 autobiography, she called Monroe "Blondie" and was often the only person on the set who could coax Monroe out of her trailer to begin the day's filming.
In the "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" sequence, Jane Russell's fall into the pool was an accident. When Howard Hawks saw the dailies, he kept it in the film.
When told she was not the star of the film, Marilyn was quoted as saying: "Well, whatever I am, I AM the blonde."
Originally bought by Fox as a vehicle for Betty Grable. After the success of Niagara (1953) (which featured Marilyn Monroe), however, the studio believed they had a more potent and far less expensive sex symbol than Grable (who was earning around $150,000 per picture vs. Monroe's $18,000).
For this film Gwen Verdon coached stars Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in both their dance and walk - Monroe with less sex, Russell with more. It's rumored that at one point in the film, Verdon dubs both Monroe's and Russell's swaying bottoms.
In her very last interview (10 years after making "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"), Marilyn Monroe recalled the lack of respect studio execs had for her, but made a point of mentioning co-star, Jane Russell: "I remember when I got the part in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.' 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. She, by the way, was quite wonderful to me."
The "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" number was later re-shot in CinemaScope, to be used as part of a CinemaScope demonstration held on the Fox lot in March of 1953. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck told "Daily Variety" that it only took 3-1/2 hours to shoot the number in CinemaScope versus four days for the original film version. The public finally saw the CinemaScope version ten years later when it closed Fox's documentary tribute to Marilyn Monroe: Marilyn (1963),
According to Marni Nixon, the studio initially wanted Marilyn Monroe's entire voice dubbed, as they thought her voice was silly. Nixon thought that idea was "awful," as she felt Monroe's voice suited her persona so beautifully. Nixon told The New York Times in March 2007 that she ended up only dubbing the operatic "no, no, nos" at the beginning of the song and the phrase "these rocks don't lose their shape."
Judy Holliday turned down the role of Lorelei Lee because she felt no actress other than Carol Channing (who played the part on Broadway) should be cast.
For the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" musical number, Marilyn Monroe was originally going to be dressed in nothing but bands of black velvet and masses of rhinestones, creating the illusion of a woman-sized diamond necklace. However, this design was deemed too revealing and vetoed by the studio in favor of the now iconic pink dress.
The play "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" opened at the Ziegfeld Theater on December 8, 1949 and ran for 740 performances starring Carol Channing. The original play of the same name opened in 1928 and ran 128 performances.
The ship model shown is the one used previously in Titanic (1953) and was refurbished to resemble the SS Ile de France, which is clearly named in the film. The model (2009) resides in the Marine Museum in Fall River, Massachusetts. Some of the ocean liner sets used were also left over from "Titanic".
Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had originally assumed the need to dub the singing voices of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe until musical director Lionel Newman famously stitched together a vocal rendition of their opening number from multiple takes. As a back-up plan, an alternate set of recordings was made with Eileen Wilson dubbing Russell's voice, which can still be heard on several Monroe tribute albums. In the end, both ladies sang for themselves, and Russell went on to release an album of songs on the MGM label. Following the success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), the notion of dubbing either actress' voice never resurfaced, and Jane Russell would go on to a very successful run on Broadway as Elaine Stritch's replacement in the show "Company" in 1971.
During a story conference for this film with Darryl F. Zanuck, director Howard Hawks suggested to Zanuck that the studio change Marilyn's look and screen persona a bit, so that Marilyn would be more of an actress and less of a blonde bombshell type. The results in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made Marilyn a massively huge film star in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Marilyn Monroe wears a gold lamé evening dress previously worn by Ginger Rogers in Dreamboat (1952).
Choreographer Jack Cole was adamant that Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) should be the only blonde apparent in the production number "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." The showgirls on the chandeliers are all brunettes or redheads, and the men flanking Monroe are all grayed at the temples. Rather than forcing the ladies of the ensemble to dye their hair, Cole affixed black netting around all of their faces that attached to their flowered headdresses in back, so that all of them appeared dark-haired on screen.
In a 1999 interview with Mark Cousins on his show, "Scene by Scene", Jane Russell admitted that "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" co-star, Tommy Noonan admitted on set that he didn't like kissing Marilyn Monroe, and when Monroe overheard his comment, she burst into tears and locked herself in her dressing room. It took a while before the crew were able to get her to come out.
One of the male dancers in the "Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend" number is an uncredited George Chakiris. After the men's faux suicide, he directly appears to her left as Monroe begins her "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" song, just as she first sings the words "quite continental."
Eight years later, he would win an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for West Side Story (1961).
Eight years later, he would win an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for West Side Story (1961).
Marilyn Monroe kept insisting on retakes despite approval of takes by director Howard Hawks. When Fox asked Hawks how production could be sped up he retorted: "Three wonderful ideas: replace Marilyn, rewrite the script and make it shorter, and get a new director."
Gossip columnists tried to create a feud between Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, but the pair got along famously. In her autobiography, Russell credited their fast friendship to their shared zodiac sign (Gemini). Russell (who was married to Robert Waterfield at the time) recalled that Monroe (who was dating Joe DiMaggio at the time) asked her what it was like to be married to an athlete. Russell told Monroe that other than the fact that athletes tend spend a lot of time with other athletes, it was great.
Two additional numbers were jettisoned from the film. Monroe's "Down Boy" was prerecorded but doesn't appear to have been photographed. "Four French Dances" was recorded and shot, incorporating "Sur la Balcon," "Soltaire," "Parle d'affair" and "La Tentateur," followed by Monroe and Russell in a reprise of "A Little Girl From Little Rock," performed in French. Remnants of this sequence can be seen in the original theatrical trailer, where Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe are shown among dancers climbing down the steps of a slide. In the final print, Monroe and Russell are seen coming off stage following the number, wearing the same costumes backstage in the French nightclub.
The vintage Citroën taxi cab in which Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell go on their shopping spree of Paris fashion houses is the same one Don Ameche drove while romancing Claudette Colbert in the 1939 comedy classic Midnight (1939), given a face lift by the 20th Century-Fox prop department.
Much of the film's success was due to the distinctive sense of humor director Howard Hawks brought to the project, as well as a sharp and witty screenplay by Charles Lederer, who wisely bypassed much of the original stage script in favor of dialogue and situations tailored specifically to the strengths of Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, and Charles Coburn. Lederer also dramatically reimagined the character of Henry Spofford III, originally written as Dorothy's love interest on stage and reconfigured as an eight-year-old boy on screen, played by George Winslow.
When Charles Lederer was adapting the stage production for the screen, his inspiration for the comic aspects of Lorelei Lee character played by Marilyn Monroe was his aunt, the silent-screen superstar Marion Davies.
"Down Boy" was written by Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson and recorded by Marilyn Monroe, designed to be performed by her and Charles Coburn during the cocktail party scene where they are shown dancing together. It was ultimately deleted and recycled for Betty Grable in Three for the Show (1955). Jack Allen reportedly rediscovered Monroe's version in 2005 in a stack of playbacks he won at an online auction, and had it remastered. Timbaland obtained Allen's permission to sample Monroe's version in 2015. It has yet to be released to the public.
The song "Bye Bye Baby" featured in this film was recorded by numerous singers in the 1950s and was on the music charts for more than six weeks.
The teaming of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe proved to be so successful, critically and commercially, that Fox wanted to re-team the duo. A December 1954 item in the Hollywood Reporter's "Rambling Reporter" column indicated that the studio wanted Russell and Monroe to star in the film "How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955)." Monroe passed on the project because she didn't like the script. In January 1955, the studio cast Sheree North as Curly (the part intended for Monroe) and Betty Grable as "Stormy Tornado" (originally intended for Russell).
Choreographer Jack Cole had been devising stage movement for non-dancing female stars in Hollywood since the mid-1940s, accenting glamorous hand, arm and hip movements within basic dance steps to camouflage his leading ladies' lack of ability. Cole reached his zenith with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Faced with two stars who had no dancing experience whatsoever, he was determined to showcase them to their best advantage. Cole accomplished this by doubling and tripling the amount of isolations per beat, which meant that Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe were actually performing a challenging series of steps in each of their numbers, made even more so by the necessity of their executing the steps, turns and arm gestures in absolute unison, which they did brilliantly. In the end, the choreography Cole devised was as intricate as a bona fide dance number. Jane Russell was so impressed by the results that she hired Cole as choreographer for Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), the companion piece that Russell financed two years later. True to form, Cole concocted dynamic, humorous movement duets for Russell and her co-star, Jeanne Crain.
The diamond tiara that Marilyn Monroe is falsely accused of stealing in this film was later worn by Patricia Medina as the "evil queen" in Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961).
At the finish of "A Little Girl From Little Rock," Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe grab a hold of the back curtains and charge the footlights, which involves scaling two small flights of stairs in high heels. Upon close inspection, Russell can be seen eyeing the next flight of stairs at each plateau, while Monroe storms both flights without looking down once.
In France the film was released without the song and dance number at the bar in downtown Paris, because Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell are dancing with a few young boys of North-African descent, which at the time was deemed inappropriate by American moviegoers and the opinion in general in the USA. In 1986, Madonna, who emulated Marilyn Monroe in her "Material Girl" video in 1984, would be criticized for dancing with an underage boy in the music video for her song "Open Your Heart."
The story was based on an ocean voyage to Europe that Anita Loos took on the same boat taking the US Olympic Team. Since the publication of the stories in book form was in 1925, it's possible the team was from the 1924 Olympiad, also immortalized in "Chariots of Fire." Regardless, the film is firmly set in the 1950's.
Second collaboration between Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, George Winslow, and director Howard Hawks. The four had made Monkey Business (1952) the year before; however, the scene on the ship's deck was the first and only time that Monroe, Coburn, and Winslow worked together.
Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
Another uncredited chorus boy in the 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend' number is Robert Fuller, who, six years later, became one of the stars of the western TV series Laramie (1959) as the former gunslinger Jess Harper. Fuller would then move from the wild West to the wilds of casualty medicine in the 1972 TV series Emergency!
The film was a rarity: a Hollywood version of a hit Broadway show that bowdlerized the stage score yet ended up improving on the original. Indeed, only three songs were retained from the stage production, but the quality of those songs -- "A Little Girl from Little Rock," "Bye Bye Baby" and "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" -- is head and shoulders above any others in the score, while the two numbers that were interpolated for the screen version by another songwriting team -- "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" and "When Love Goes Wrong" -- are both bona fide showstoppers. In all, there are only five numbers in the film -- each of which remain iconic-- as opposed to nineteen in the stage show, sixteen of which have been largely forgotten.
Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell spend much of this film walking, singing, and dancing in absolute unison.
Though the film was a 20th Century-Fox production, the original soundtrack album was released on MGM Records - the first time MGM's record label released a soundtrack album from a film MGM hadn't produced.
Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.
Because of the later CinemaScope demo re-shoot of one sequence, it's totally understandable if some viewers think they're actually watching the full movie from an old 9:12 Academy ratio cropped TV version of the film, and can't find the full-length movie in the "original" CinemaScope widescreen ratio. Curiously, it seems a strange Production choice why the whole film wasn't shot in even a slightly widescreen ratio, as the huge sets would have been the perfect shape to shoot in a wider ratio.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2000 list of the 500 movies nominated for the Top 100 Funniest American Movies.
The Olympic team is apparently taking a rather roundabout route to Helsinki, host city for the 1952 summer games. In the pre jet age, most Transatlantic steamers from the U.S. docked at Cherbourg, France, or Southampton, England. From there, passengers would board trains to their final European destination, as the U.S. team likely did. The British Olympians in "Chariots of Fire" (1981) did the same thing to reach Paris in 1924.
The iconic fuchsia pink dress from "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" would inspire many future performers and fashion designers. While Madonna famously covered the scene, down to the gown, in her 1984 music video for "Material Girl," the design, and its vivid hue, was still influencing style on the 2022 Grammy red carpet.
Jane Russell made two movies in 1953 involving an ocean liner trip to France. This film was one, with the other being The French Line (1953).
The comment about the 'pigeon' having ruby red eyes likely refers to "pigeon blood" rubies, the most sought after variety of the red gem.
Noel Neil, who played Lois Lane on the Superman TV show appears in the scenes when they first board the ship.
American actor/screenwriter, Beau Dare wrote a character in one of his film scripts (2018) named "Lorelei", based on Marilyn Monroe's "Lorelei Lee" in the film, showing Marilyn's gentle, perceptive qualities. This was inspired by Robert Mitchum's interesting stories, about working with Monroe, when Dare worked with him in Hollywood.
Among the Paris salons visited by the ladies are the House of Dior, Balenciaga, Maison Schiaparelli, and Guerlain Parfumerie. All are still in business (though the companies have changed their makeup over the years) in 2022.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2002 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 top 100 America's Greatest Love Stories movies.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2004 list of the top 100 America's Greatest Music in the Movies for the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend."
The U. S. hosiery company Hanes nodded to the film title in its 1970's-80's ad campaign, "Gentlemen Prefer Hanes." In the 90's, the tagline became, "The Lady Prefers Hanes."
Although the U.S.Olympic team is headed to the 1952 games in Helsinki, no female uniformed athletes are seen. It's possible the team was split by gender back then, with the ladies sailing on another ship. The IOC first welcomed female athletes at the 1900 games and the 1981 film "Chariots of Fire" showed the entire British contingent sailing to France on a cross channel ferry. Notably, the Helsinki Olympiad marked the first participation by a team from the USSR.
The engagement ring Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) wore in the movie wasn't a real diamond but was actually a rhinestone crystal ring. It was put up for auction in 2018 (from the personal collection of Sidney Rosenstein, who obtained it from Ms. Monroe's manager, Inez Melson, shortly after Ms. Monroe's death). The ring sold at auction for $15,000, which, coincidentally, is the amount Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) told Lorelei she'd need for the diamond tiara in the film.
One of the Olympians states he's a 'four letter' man, indicating he has lettered in four collegiate sports. Marilyn Monroe misconstrues this as meaning he uses four letter (off color) words.
The girls' dressing room in Paris includes a French version of the placard that appears in probably every dressing room scene ever shot: "Please turn out the lights when leaving".
Marilyn Monroe/Jane Russel's initial sultry courtroom scene may well have inspired Sharon Stone's appearance in "Basic Instinct" (1992).
