Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [VHS] [1951]

Lorelei Lee (Marilyn) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) are just two little girls from Little Rock, entertainers and best of friends. Lorelei is obsessed with finding a rich husband, and she definitely has Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan) eating out of her hands; the only problem is that Gus' rich father doesn't approve of her. Thus are plans made for Lorelei to sail to France, where she and Gus will be married after he arrives a short while later. Gus' dad sends a private detective by the name of Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid) along on the journey to spy on Lorelei, and he of course ends up falling in love with Dorothy. Lorelei works her magic on Sir Francis "Piggy" Beekman (played brilliantly by beloved character actor Charles Coburn) leading Esmond (via Malone's report) to call off the wedding and cut Lorelei off financially, and Dorothy and Malone have a falling out once his real identity is discovered. Stuck in Paris without money or a place to stay, Lorelei and Dorothy go back to entertaining, but their troubles don't end there. Things get pretty wild toward the end, but naturally all the major players are reunited in the end.

Marilyn is divine as the blonde, acquisitive Lorelei Lee, and it could be said that she was never lovelier than she was in this movie. This "dumb blonde" could be smart when she needed to be, and she dispenses some unforgettable advice and classic lines here. She worries about Dorothy because, unlike her, Dorothy only seems to fall for poor men, and Lorelei tells her that she wants her "to be happy - and stop having fun." Her attempts to set Dorothy up with a rich man on the ship backfire when her chosen Mr. Right ends up being a little boy, but Mr. Henry Spofford III (George Winslow) adds some unforgettable laughs to the mix. Perhaps my favorite line from the film comes when Lorelei is trying to talk "Piggy" into giving her his wife's tiara: "It's a terrible thing to be lonesome, especially in the middle of a crowd." That line has always stuck with me because it really applies so well to Marilyn's own personal life.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes boasts of a number of great songs, barreling right out of the gates with Marilyn and Russell singing A Little Girl From Little Rock. Bye Bye Baby is an impressive and rather elaborate number, Russell's performance of the song Ain't There Anyone Here for Love to the backdrop of the U.S. Olympic team is quite memorable, and the Monroe-Russell number When Love Goes Wrong, Nothing Goes Right is fantastic and really shows Monroe's comfort level with her singing and dancing. All of these pale to the really big number, though. Perhaps only the skirt blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch is more famous than Monroe's knockout performance of the song Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.

I don't consider Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to be Marilyn's best movie, but I would recommend it as the starting point to those yet to glimpse the power and beauty of the Goddess. If you want to understand the Marilyn phenomenon, this is where you want to begin because Marilyn is simply mesmerizing from the first frame to the last here. It's actually quite difficult to take your eyes off of Marilyn long enough to fully appreciate this movie for its own sake, so I recommend multiple viewings.