*I JUST LOVE FINDING NEW PLACES TO WEAR DIAMONDS*

If you doubt that Marilyn Monroe was an actress of high natural intelligence I urge you to go and see Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the exhilarating 1953 musical comedy directed by Howard Hawks. The script by Charles Lederer, from the musical that was based on Anita Loos’s 1920s novel, holds up extremely well. I watched it at home via Netflix last night, where I roared with laughter.

There’s a telling exchange towards the end when Marilyn, playing the gold-digging blonde Lorelei Lee, comes face to face with the disapproving father (Taylor Holmes) of her rich, gormless boyfriend Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan).

“I thought you were dumb,” says Esmond Senior. “I can be smart when it’s important,” Lorelei replies. “But most men don’t like it.”
Marilyn herself suggested this piece of dialogue and it demonstrates her shrewdness, her subversive edge and her intuitive understanding of the role. In fact Lorelei >would not work as a character – we wouldn’t like her and she would be unbearably cold and cynical – if it wasn’t for Marilyn’s subtlety, as well as her colossal attractiveness. She really is at her peak here – she actually seems to glow. Somehow they’re not like the women you see in cinema today. They seem at the same time more lifelike and more glamorous. They come across as highly sexual, erotic, full-size women who eat three meals a day, drink double martinis and don’t only push exotic leaves around a plate. Their figures show properly feminine, gentle undulations – their backsides and gently bulging abdomens, for instance.It contrasts with today’s look which is the opposite of sensual, where the female form is angular, starved, sterile and stick-like and interrupted by sharp synthetic bumps. In an intimate scene between Lorelei and Gus, the rich boyfriend, you can see the natural imperfections and crinkles on her forehead. Surely that would never be allowed now.

There are plenty of dirty innuendos in the film but the lines aren’t delivered as they would be today, with a sleazy knowingness – instead Marilyn’s face especially is a picture of fluttering, wide-eyed innocence. One of the funniest scenes has Lorelei trying to squeeze her capacious behind through a porthole, assisted by George Winslow as a gloriously precocious, deep-voiced child saying lines like: “You’ve got a lot of animal magnetism”.
If you have the time, I suggest you go and rent this film! I promise it wont disappoint.