Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was an unexpected hit

Wow, was this an enthusiastic discussion about the unexpected fun of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos.  Thank you Ashley for hosting this lively discussion. Who knew this was such a phenomenon in its time, turned into a movie in 1928.



It was also a Broadway play starring Carole Channing in 1949, which included the song "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" and a 1953 movie launching Marilyn Monroe. "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" provided the scenario for the music video of Madonna's "Material Girl". And we haven't yet mentioned the Blonde inspired wallpaper and fabric, among other things. Who knew?


We thought this would be a quick and fun read and it was - James Joyce read this book when the strains of writing Finnegan's Wake got overwhelming. (Too bad the book wasn't longer, maybe it could have distracted poor Joyce from a few hundred pages.) Edith Wharton called it "the great American novel."

There is no doubt it was a romp, and it inspired a comic strip that ran in 1926. Evidently, this type of story was not so often told at the time, as it made a huge hit. 

The story of the "professional lady" may seem all too familiar, but in this case, the general consensus was that Lorelei Lee controlled her fate and used what she could to get what she wanted, unabashedly. Lorelei was perhaps named for the German mythical siren of the Rhine and the convoluted plot would support that theory. 

Lorelei and her "chaperone" Dorothy go through a convoluted series of adventures that result in one man after another buying them jewels, clothes, fancy dinners and more across two continents.   In the end, Lorelei gets what she wants, and we were rooting for her. 

Supposedly inspired by Loos seeing a young blonde exert control over an older H.L. Mencken, then a highly prominent journalist, this story was told in stylized way that some found hard to read. 

This novel was taken up by the women's lib movement, and the author was quoted as saying  “They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men, That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.” 

This book was published in the same year as The Great Gatsby and was if anything even more well received. Perhaps it is the odd grammar and spelling of the narrator but this story lives on as film much more so than as a novel, unlike Gatsby. 

And so on to November which will be at Lynn's. Good news for us all, we have decided to move War and Peace to January as we are all struggling with the small type. I keep getting distracted by the French, so I am crawling through it, although I am quite happily immersed. 

Our November book will be The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse, which was one of our Christmas swap books, brought by Gordon. While it may be in the same vein as Blondes, we wanted something light and fun to give us time for Tolstoy. Also, if you have read Wodehouse, or are attracted to a different one of his books, no problem, read what you want of his and we can have a more general author discussion. I have a stack of Wodehouse and feel Jeeves and I are old friends already. 

It is a pleasure to read something, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, that I would have never, ever picked up on my own that was a cultural phenomenon in its time. It is one of the things I treasure about this group! Thanks everyone!