Loos wrote a sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, in 1927.[5] Decades later, Loos was asked during a television interview whether she intended to write a third book. She replied that the title and theme of a third book would be Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen.[7] This quip resulted in the interview's abrupt termination.[7]
Anita Loos's jealousy over H. L. Mencken's attentions towards a young blonde actress inspired the premise of the story.
Over the years, Anita Loos told differing origin stories for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, although each of the different origin stories involves an incident aboard a train.[8] In early 1925, while working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, California, a 40-year-old Loos boarded a train either alone or with actor Douglas Fairbanks.[9] Aboard the train, she encountered littérateurH. L. Mencken, the gruff editor of The Smart Set, in the company of an attractive young blonde, often identified as either actress Mae Davis or Mae Clarke.[10]
As Loos lugged her heavy suitcases from their overhead racks while nearby men failed to offer any assistance whatsoever, the young blonde dropped her book, and several male bystanders immediately jumped to retrieve it.[11] As an attractive young brunette, Loos observed this stark contrast in the men's behavior and surmised that the difference stemmed from the other woman being a blonde.[11]
Mencken, a close friend to whom Loos felt sexually attracted,[12] continued focusing his attention on the young blonde and behaving like a love-struck simpleton.[13] "Prompted by a flirtation that Henry Mencken was having with a stupid little blonde," Loos recalled, "I wrote a skit poking fun at his romance. I had no thought of it ever being printed".[14] During the train ride, a jealous Loos hastily jotted down the short story in the persona of a young blonde flapper recounting her dalliances in an intimate diary.[15]
Upon arriving at her home, Loos forgot about the story, but she rediscovered the manuscript after unpacking her suitcases.[15] Piqued at Mencken, she placed the manuscript in an envelope and mailed it to him.[15] Mencken enjoyed the deprecatory piece and forwarded the manuscript to Henry Sell, the editor of Harper's Bazaar.[16] Sell accepted the story for publication, and he urged Loos to continue writing about the blonde flapper's escapades.[15] Due to the popularity of Loos' stories, the magazine's circulation skyrocketed,[17] and Boni & Liveright published the stories in book form in November 1925.[17]
Plot summary
A kiss on the hand may make you feel very nice, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw arrive in 1920s Paris where Lorelei spots a Coty's sign.
Lorelei and Dorothy are confronted by Lady Beekman who demands the return of her tiara.
Born in Arkansas,[b] a blonde flapper named Lorelei Lee meets Gus Eisman, a Chicago businessman whom she calls "Daddy." He installs her in a New York City apartment and "educates" her. He pays for jewelry from Cartier, dinners at the Ritz, and tickets to the Ziegfeld Follies. During this time, she meets a married novelist named Gerry Lamson, who frowns upon her liaison with Eisman. Lamson wishes to "save" her from Eisman and asks her to marry him. Not wishing to forgo a trip to Europe paid for by Eisman, Lorelei spurns Lamson.[18] Meanwhile, she is dismayed that her friend Dorothy Shaw wastes her time with a poor editor named Mencken,[c] who writes for a dull magazine,[d] when she could be pursuing wealthy men.[20]
Lorelei and Dorothy sail for Europe on the RMS Majestic.[e] Lorelei learns that Bartlett, a former district attorney who is now a U.S. Senator, is aboard the ship. She recounts a dubious backstory in which a lawyer employed her as a stenographer, and she shot him to defend her virtue. During the trial, which Bartlett prosecuted, Lorelei gave such "compelling" testimony that the all-male jury acquitted her. The judge bought her a ticket to Hollywood so that she could use her acting talents to become a star. Due to her siren-like personality, he nicknamed her "Lorelei".[f] Lorelei exacts revenge on Bartlett by seducing him and revealing secrets about his senatorial activities.[20]
Dorothy and Lorelei arrive in England where they are unimpressed with the Tower of London as it is smaller than "the Hickox building in Little Rock." Invited to a soirée where English aristocrats sell counterfeit jewels to naive tourists, Lorelei encounters an elderly matron who is selling a diamond tiara. Lorelei casts her eye around the room for a wealthy man to buy it for her and settles on Sir Francis Beekman, whom she calls "Piggie." With flattery and the promise of discretion due to his matrimonial status, she persuades him to buy the tiara.[22]
In Paris, the duo are more excited by jewelry shops than by the "Eyeful Tower."[23] Beekman's wife confronts Lorelei and threatens to ruin her reputation if she does not return the tiara. Dorothy intercedes and notes that Lady Beekman's threats are hollow since Lorelei has no reputation to destroy.[23] Later, the flappers are confronted by a French lawyer and his son acting on behalf of Lady Beekman. Impressed by the women's beauty, the father and son dine with them and charge all expenses to Lady Beekman. Lorelei has a replica made of the tiara and—by playing the father and son against each other—she keeps the real tiara and sends them away with the fake one.[23]
In Vienna, Lorelei meets a "Dr. Froyd." Freud fails to psycho-analyze her because she has never repressed her inhibitions. Later, Lorelei tells her past history to Spoffard in a sympathetic light. He weeps at the moral outrages which Lorelei has supposedly endured and likens her to Mary Magdalene.[24] Meeting his mother, Lorelei claims to be a Christian Scientist and that drinking champagne is encouraged by her religion. They become drunk together, and Lorelei gives his mother a cloche hat. Since Spoffard's mother has an Edwardian hairstyle, Lorelei bobs her hair for the hat to fit. Soon after, Spoffard proposes marriage to Lorelei by letter. She plans to use this letter as evidence of breach of promise and obtain a financial settlement.[24]
Tiring of Spoffard, Lorelei nudges him towards breach of promise by embarking upon a shopping spree and charging it all to his accounts.[25] Meanwhile, she meets Gilbertson Montrose, a handsome screenwriter. Montrose advises her that it would be wiser to marry Spoffard so that he could finance Montrose's new movie in which Lorelei could star. Lorelei decides she will marry Spoffard while pursuing a clandestine sexual liaison with Montrose. She rushes to Penn Station and finds Spoffard. She claims her extravagance was faked to test his love. Remorseful, Spoffard vows to marry her and to finance Montrose's film.[25]
Lorelei Lee—a young blonde flapper from Arkansas,[b] inspired by actress Mae Davis or Mae Clarke.[9] As a relentless gold digger,[g] Lorelei epitomizes the insouciant hedonism and unbridled avarice of the Jazz Age.[27] The character was partly inspired by actresses Peggy Hopkins Joyce and Lillian Lorraine.[28] As the most notorious of Florenz Ziegfeld's showgirls, Lorraine "was fond of all things sterling, forty-carat or unflawed, and she collected so many trinkets that when forced to sell the lot at the height of the [Great] Depression, she pocketed over two hundred thousand dollars."[29]
Dorothy Shaw—Lorelei's world-weary and perceptive brunette companion based on Loos herself as well as her friend Constance Talmadge.[30]
Sir Francis Beekman—a toothless flirt nicknamed "Piggie" who gives a diamond tiara to Lorelei in exchange for her physical affections. The character was modeled upon both writer Joseph Hergesheimer and producer Jesse L. Lasky who pestered Loos and other attractive young women at Hollywood soirées.[29]
Lady Beekman—the wife of Sir Francis Beekman who stalks Lorelei and Dorothy to France in order to obtain the tiara which her husband gifted to the blonde flapper.
Gus Eisman—a wealthy international businessman known as "the Button King of Chicago" who serves as Lorelei's sugar daddy until she later weds Henry Spoffard.[15] The character bears a resemblance to globe-trotting entrepreneur and con-artist Ivar Kreuger who was popularly known as "the Match King" during the Twenties.[32]
Gilbertson Montrose—a handsome young Hollywood screenwriter with whom Lorelei plans to have an extramarital affair after her marriage to Spoffard. The character was likely modeled upon Anita Loos' husband, screenwriter John Emerson.
Although the book sold phenomenally, the critical response was mixed.[17] Whereas some reviewers described the work as "droll and merry," "side-splittingly funny," and "sly and sophisticated," other reviewers were less enthusiastic and patently unamused.[17] Ruth Goodman in The New York Tribune disliked Loos' misspelling words for comedic effect.[34] Columnist Doris Blake in The New York Daily News criticized Loos for asserting that blondes are more sexually appealing to men than brunettes.[35] Perhaps the most laudatory review was by Herman J. Mankiewicz—the future screenwriter of Citizen Kane—who gave Loos' book a rave review in The New York Times and summarized the novel as "a gorgeously smart and intelligent piece of work."[36]
Despite the mixed critical reviews, other authors heaped copious praise upon the work. Author William Faulkner wrote a personal letter to Loos after reading her novel.[37] Filled with congratulatory remarks, Faulkner lauded the brilliance of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and complimented Loos regarding the originality of her characters such as Dorothy Shaw.[38]Aldous Huxley, author of the dystopian novel Brave New World, likewise wrote a letter of praise to Loos.[39] As a result of this letter, Huxley and Loos met in 1926 when the British novelist visited America for the first time.[40]
"I have just read the Blonde book.... Please accept my envious congratulations on [the character of] Dorothy.... My God, it's charming.... I am still rather Victorian in my prejudices regarding the intelligence of women, despite Elinor Wylie and Willa Cather and all the balance of them. But I wish I had thought of Dorothy first."
"[I am] now reading the great American novel (at last!) and I want to know if there are—or will be—others and if you know the young woman, who must be a genius."
George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher and author, facetiously averred that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was "the best book on philosophy written by an American."[44] Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells escorted Loos out to dinner when she visited London as a reward for her excellent work.[3] Even the Prince of Wales was reported to have been so amused by the novel that he purchased many copies of the book and gave them to his companions.[5][45]
The work's popularity crossed national borders into countries such as the Republic of China and the Soviet Union, and the book was translated into more than a dozen different languages and published in 85 editions.[46] In 1927, Loos wrote a well-received sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes.[5] Several decades later, Loos was asked during a television interview in London whether she intended to write a third book. She facetiously replied that the title and theme of a third book would be Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen.[7] This remark resulted in the interview's abrupt termination.[7]
Critical analysis
Critics in socialist countries interpreted the work to be an anti-capitalistpolemic.[47] "When the book reached Russia," Loos recalled, "it was embraced by Soviet authorities as evidence of the exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the capitalistic system. The Russians, with their native love of grief, stripped Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of all its fun and the plot which they uncovered was dire."[47]
These reviews focused on the "rape of its heroine, an attempt by her to commit murder, the heroine being cast adrift in the gangster-infested New York of Prohibition days, her relentless pursuit by predatory males, her renunciation of the only man who ever stirred her inner soul as a woman, her nauseous connection with a male who is repulsive to her physically, mentally and emotionally and her final engulfment in the grim monotony of suburbanPhiladelphia."[47] Loos denied any such intentions in the work and was amused by such interpretations.[47]
Although Loos publicly ridiculed any social or gender interpretations of her comedic novel,[47] contemporary literary critics have nonetheless posited such critiques of the novel, delving into various interpretations of sex and the body.[48]
June Walker (left) portrayed Lorelei and Edna Hibbard (right) portrayed Dorothy in the 1926 play.
Following the widespread success of the book, BroadwayimpresarioFlorenz Ziegfeld contacted Loos and suggested that he adapt the story as a glamorous musical.[49] Ziegfeld said that actress Marilyn Miller—one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s—should play the siren role of Lorelei Lee.[49] To her regret, Loos had already signed a contract with rival Broadway producer Edgar Selwyn to adapt the story as a straight comedy, and she could not break the contract.[49]
Under the contract with Selwyn, Loos and her playwright husband John Emerson adapted the novel as a Broadway stage play.[50] Brunette June Walker was cast as Lorelei and performed the role in a blonde wig.[51] Comedienne Edna Hibbard played Dorothy and Frank Morgan portrayed reformer Henry Spoffard.[52] The play debuted in Detroit on April 28, 1926,[53] and was performed 201 times from 1926 to 1927.[49]
As the first actress to portray Lorelei Lee on Broadway, June Walker was instrumental in an interpretation that helped define the character. She was said to have "played a role that was as much her creation as that of Anita Loos."[51] "Tossing her golden curls, blinking her eyes and twirling her waist-length string of pearls", Walker's version of Lorelei embodied the flapper of the Roaring Twenties.[51] The success of the play launched Walker's career, and she had further Broadway successes.[51]
Excerpt from the July 20, 1926 installment of the comic strip, drawn by Virginia Huget.
Loos licensed her novel to the Bell Syndicate for use in a daily newspaper comic strip series.[54][55] The strip ran from June 7 to October 2, 1926.[56][57] The strip mixed adaptations of moments from the novel with new gags featuring the characters of Lorelei and Dorothy.[54][57] The strip was credited to Loos, with art supplied by Virginia Huget, the start of her career drawing flapper comics.[54][58][59] Huget was touted as a fashion expert who could draw Lorelei and Dorothy in the latest clothes.[57] Artist Phil Cook later replaced Huget.[60][61][54] Newspapers reprinted this original 1926 series from 1929 to the early 1930s.[62]
In 1928, the book was adapted as a silentParamount motion picture.[49] Under that contract, Loos and her husband Emerson wrote the screenplay and had "to prepare the final scenario, select the cast, and have a hand in supervising the production," as well as write the inter-titles.[63] The film was directed by Malcolm St. Clair, and Lorelei Lee was played by Ruth Taylor. Loos hand-picked her for the role because she bore "a remarkable resemblance to Ralph Barton's illustrations in the book."[63] Loos described Taylor's performance as "so ideal for the role that she even played it off-screen and married a wealthy broker."[49]
Following the film's success, Taylor married a prominent New York City businessman and became a Park Avenuesocialite.[49] For the 1928 film, Loos altered the story to include a prologue featuring Lorelei's grandfather as a gold-obsessed prospector and an epilogue in which Lorelei's impoverished Arkansas family learn via radio of her lavish wedding.[63]
By 1929, Loos' gold-digger epic had been adapted for a variety of different mediums: "It had been done in book form and serialized in magazines and syndicated in newspapers and designed into dress material and printed into wall paper and made into a comic strip and had even had a song by Irving Berlin."[49]
Over a decade later, in 1941, theater director John C. Wilson suggested that Loos permit a musical adaptation of the story.[49] Wilson's desired version never came to fruition. The musical adaptation was produced by Herman Levin and Oliver Smith, whom Loos met while sailing on a steamship to the United States from Europe.[49] The 1949 musical edition starred Carol Channing as Lorelei Lee and Yvonne Adair as Dorothy Shaw, and ran for 740 performances on Broadway.[50] The musical's success prompted a brief sartorial revival of 1920s fashions by dress factories.[49]
The second and more popular film adaptation of the novel was derived from the 1949 musical and released in 1953 by 20th Century Fox.[64] This second adaptation was filmed in technicolor and featured Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei and Jane Russell as Dorothy.[65] In order to conform to the moral precepts of the Motion Picture Production Code, much of the sexual promiscuity of the 1949 musical was expurgated in the 1953 film adaptation as film censors in the 1950s United States deemed any authentic cinematic interpretation of the bygone Jazz Age—with its libertine sexuality and bra-less flappers—to be impermissible.[66][67]
Corinne Anita Loos was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her screenplay of the 1939 adaptation of The Women, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella Gigi.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a 1953 American musical comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and written by Charles Lederer. The film is based on the 1949 stage musical of the same name, which in turn is based on the 1925 novel of the same name by Anita Loos. The film stars Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, with Charles Coburn, Elliott Reid, Tommy Noonan, George Winslow, Taylor Holmes and Norma Varden in supporting roles.
A gold digger is a person, typically a woman, who engages in a type of transactional sexual relationship for money rather than love. If it turns into marriage, it is a type of marriage of convenience.
Blonde stereotypes are stereotypes of blonde-haired people. Sub-types of this stereotype include the "blonde bombshell" and the "dumb blonde". Blondes have historically been portrayed as physically attractive, though often perceived as less intelligent compared to their brunette counterparts. There are many blonde jokes made on these premises. However, research has shown that blonde women are not less intelligent than women with other hair colors.
Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Katharine Brush, and a screenplay by Anita Loos. It was directed by Jack Conway and stars Jean Harlow as a woman who uses sex to advance her social position. During the course of the film, Harlow's character breaks up a marriage, has multiple affairs, has premarital sex, and attempts to kill a man.
June Walker was an American stage and film actress.
Aileen Pringle was an American stage and film actress during the silent film era.
Mary Loos was an American actress, screenwriter, TV writer, and novelist. She was occasionally credited under her full name, Mary Anita Loos.
Gentlemen Marry Brunettes is a 1955 American Technicolor musical romantic comedy film directed by Richard Sale, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mary Loos, based on the 1927 novel But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos, aunt of Mary Loos. The film stars Jane Russell and Jeanne Crain. It was produced by Sale and Bob Waterfield, with Robert Bassler as executive producer.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a musical with a book by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos, lyrics by Leo Robin, and music by Jule Styne, based on the best-selling 1925 novel of the same name by Loos. The story involves an American woman's voyage to Paris to perform in a nightclub.
Ruth Alice Taylor was an American actress in silent films and early talkies. Her son was the writer, comic, and actor Buck Henry.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes may refer to:
But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes is a 1927 novel written by Anita Loos. It is the sequel to her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The plot follows the further adventures of Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw and is illustrated by Ralph Barton.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a 1928 American silent comedy film directed by Mal St. Clair, co-written by Anita Loos based on her 1925 novel, and released by Paramount Pictures. No copies are known to exist, and it is now considered to be a lost film. The Broadway version Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Carol Channing as Lorelei Lee was mounted in 1949. It was remade into the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Jane Russell as Dorothy Shaw and Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei Lee in 1953, directed by Howard Hawks.
Lorelei is a musical with a book by Kenny Solms and Gail Parent, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Jule Styne. It is a revision of the Joseph Fields-Anita Loos book for the 1949 production Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and includes many of the Jule Styne-Leo Robin songs written for the original.
The Bell Syndicate, launched in 1916 by editor-publisher John Neville Wheeler, was an American syndicate that distributed columns, fiction, feature articles and comic strips to newspapers for decades. It was located in New York City at 247 West 43rd Street and later at 229 West 43rd Street. It also reprinted comic strips in book form.
Carol Ann "Cari" Beauchamp was an American author, historian, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. She authored the biography Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood, which was subsequently made into a documentary film. She was the resident scholar of the Mary Pickford Foundation.
Virginia Clark, better known as Virginia Huget, was a prolific and versatile American comic strip artist and writer. She is known for her comic strips depicting flappers and for broadening the flapper image by depicting them as young working women as opposed to freewheeling and carefree, which was the commonly used stereotype at the time.
Wise Guys Prefer Brunettes is an American silent comedy film directed by F. Richard Jones and Stan Laurel, starring James Finlayson, Ted Healy, Charlotte Mineau, and Helene Chadwick. It was released by Pathé Exchange on October 3, 1926.
Gentleman Prefer Blondes is a 1926 play by Anita Loos and John Emerson, based upon Loos' 1925 international best-selling novel of the same name.
References
Notes
↑ The first edition of the book has the title Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady on the front jacket. The book cover, spine, and interior title pages state the title as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady.
1 2 Loos chose Arkansas as Lorelei's birthplace due to H. L. Mencken's 1917 essay on American culture where he castigated the state for its ignorant inhabitants and branded it as "the Sahara of the Bozart"—a pun on the Southern pronunciation of "beaux-arts".[12]
↑ This is a reference to writer, essayist, and literary magazine editor H. L. Mencken. Author Anita Loos was an intimate friend of Mencken and regarded him as "an idol to adore for a lifetime."[12]
↑ This is a reference to H. L. Mencken's literary magazine The Smart Set which was one of the era's most vogue publications.[19]
↑ In 1925, the RMS Majestic was the largest passenger ship in the world and an internationally famous icon during the Jazz Age.
↑ The name "Lorelei" is a reference to the 1801 poem by German author Clemens Brentano which recounts the story of a siren who bewitches men and causes their deaths.[21] For further details, see folklore regarding Lorelei.
↑ According to Loos, during the Jazz Age, "a girl's chief asset was the allure with which she disguised her normal acquisitiveness. That type reached its perfection in the gold diggers of the Twenties."[26]
Citations
↑ Carey 1988, p.25: "Anita Loos's comic masterpiece, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, is the story of a gold-digger's progress in the bathtub-gin era of American history."
↑ Fitzgerald 1945, p.15: "[The Jazz Age represented] a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure."
↑ Carey 1988, p.88: "In most accounts, her name is either Mae Davis or Mae Clarke, always identified as an actress. Miss Clarke, best remembered for getting a grapefuit squashed in her face in The Public Enemy, insists that she was not Anita's model. She did meet Anita on a train, but not until several years later".
↑ Loos 1974, p.63: "The King replied that he might look up the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and tell her that the Prince of Wales had bought nineteen copies of the book and that the entire royal family found it very 'laughable'."
↑ Robbins 1993, p.34: "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes... [was] Virginia Huget's first strip."
↑ Booker 2014, p.425: "The 1920s saw the rise of the 'Flapper' [in comics]... the prolific artist Virginia Huget began the popular strip based on Anita Loos's bestseller Gentlemen Prefer Blondes..."
↑ Kennedy 2018, p.39: "Huget reportedly drew the comic for only a few weeks after which Phil Cook took over; why she was replaced is not known."
Hailey, Gene (June 22, 1926). "Gentlemen Prefer Blonds Comes Out in Comic Strip". The Carmel Cymbal. Vol.1, no.7. Carmel, California. p.8 – via Internet Archive. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos, the season's hit as a book and a play, has been made into a comic strip by the author. The new comic made its appearance in the New York Evening World on June 7. Miss Loos has provided an amusing scenario for her two famous girls, Lorelei and Dorothy. The drawings are by Virginia Huget, whose reputation as a fashion expert guarantees that women readers will find the girls clad in the last minute duds.
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