Day 83: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Unrated, 1 hr. 31 min.  Directed by: Howard Hawks.  Release Date: July 15, 1953.  DVD Release Date: May 29, 2001.

When I was around 10, I was given a semi-creative writing assignment by Mrs. Loesch, my English teacher that year and arguably my favorite teacher until high school.  Mrs. Loesch liked to give us assignments like that, stuff that was a bit off the wall and that usually required a lot more thought than a normal report would have.  The terms were simple:  in three to five pages, we had to write a fictional story that was based on real events.  Sicko (note:  not ‘psycho’) that I am, I chose the death of Marilyn Monroe, for which I wrote a murder mystery story, proving once again that I read too much as a kid.  I didn’t know anything about her relationship with the late, former President Kennedy.  I didn’t know that she was a famous actress with a range you wouldn’t have guessed if you ever saw her on live television.  Mostly what I knew was that she was the subject of Elton John’s (I think it was his) Candle in the Wind, which was a big deal back in the day, so stop judging.  Strangely, it took me more than 20 years to get interested in the career of one of America's most famous sex symbols.

I should preface this to say that while I don’t mind musicals, I don’t really get them, either.  Are we supposed to believe these people really just broke out into song every so often?  If you’ve been watching Total Drama Adventure on Cartoon Network, which is surprisingly funny, you know they’ve started spoofing musicals for exactly that reason, in addition to spoofing reality TV for all the expected reasons.  So the musicals generally have to work really hard to keep me from frowning every time they start singing.

I have to say that I enjoyed this, which is hardly surprising because it is kind of a classic.  But there were a lot of things I didn’t get.  Like a “relay” team that does gymnastics wearing only short, tight flesh-colored shorts.  The last time I saw that, it was on SEAL and EOD teams at boot camp, and the shorts were so tight that I inevitably winced when I saw them.  This leads me to another realization:  that Marilyn Monroe’s presence usually revolves around what was probably shockingly risqué for the time period.  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes feels like it's basically what Showgirls would have been if it had been made 40 years earlier and if there had been two leading female roles instead of one. 

For me, Jane Russell and George Winslow made this movie.  They provided most of the comedy and about 90% of the interest.  They certainly made up for the lame character traits that Monroe did a fine job of putting forward. While I liked this movie, I really disliked Monroe's character, which I suspect was rather the point.