Fri 4 Aug 2023
An Archived Movie Review: GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[7] Comments
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. 20th Century Fox, 1953. Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Elliott Reid, Tommy Noonan, George Winslow. Based on the musical comedy by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos. Director: Howard Hawks. Currently streaming online here.
Especially if the blonde is Marilyn Monroe. Jane Russell is the brunette of the pair, showgirls with two tally opposed ways of looking for a husband. Lorelei Lee is a golddigger from the word go, while her friend is looking merely for a man.
There is not much to the story. Subtract the singing and dancing, and you’d have an hour or less of plot, which nobody probably pays any attention to anyway. Marilyn steals the show as the really not-so-dumb blonde. She has all the moves in the book.
August 4th, 2023 at 7:35 pm
Lots of people are interested in the non musical parts of this film!
Howard Hawks is one of the most studied directors in film history.
Books in English.
John Belton, critical study.
Robin Wood, critical study.
Todd McCarthy, biography.
Endless articles.
August 4th, 2023 at 8:18 pm
The book is on my tbr. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66829 I tried it once and had to stop but it’s something I think we’re supposed to read.
Hawks is amazing for the versatility of his skill. Scarface and the The Big Sleep showed serious hardboiled chops, makes a couple of the best screwball comedies with Bringing up Baby and His Girl Friday, and makes 2 of the greatest westerns in rio bravo and red River. Add in this classic musical and it’s fair to wonder if there’s anything he couldn’t do, and do spectacularly well. Hard to name (m)any other directors with his range.
August 4th, 2023 at 8:57 pm
The barely concealed sexual innuendo peculiar to almost all of Hawks films is seldom closer to the surface than here, and considering Monroe and Russell it isn’t surprising.
Hawks supposedly had his wandering eye on Russell, but he gives Monroe free reign as the wisest dumb blonde in film history and his camera finds ways to frame her that are both innocent and lewd at the same time exploiting the irony that her sexuality on screen was never dirty or sinful, but fresh and healthy and shockingly honest for the period.
The film delights in her two mis-matched suitors, leering Charles Coburn as the dirty old man and George Winslow as the overly developed youngster, the former in his second childhood and the latter with the mind of a lothario and the body of a child.
And, of course, Eliot Reed is playing a private eye in this one fitting in nicely here.
Richard Sale directed the much lesser sequel of sorts GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES, not surprising as his wife and co-writer Mary Loos was the niece of writer Anita Loos.
August 5th, 2023 at 8:09 pm
I really enjoyed seeing this film again.
Thank you for telling us it’s available!
It’s nice and cheerful.
August 5th, 2023 at 8:50 pm
We don’t really think of Hawks and musicals, but “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is one of the greatest musical numbers in film.
August 6th, 2023 at 8:21 am
“Square shaped or pear shaped,
These rocks don’t lose their shape….”
August 6th, 2023 at 4:23 pm
“I don’t mean rhinestones…!”