![]() ![]() “I wish I had thought of Dorothy first,” Faulkner lamented. Consider these fascinating facts: No less a novelist than Edith Wharton called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes “the Great American Novel.” William Faulkner wrote Loos a personal letter telling her how he admired the book and sent her his “envious congratulations” on the character of Dorothy Shaw, the book’s wisecracking sidekick. ![]() As such, it’s generally overshadowed by the 600 pound gorilla that is Gatsby, but if you’re interested in a comic rather than a tragic depiction of the age, you’re going to want to take a look at Loos’s book. That novel came out the same year as Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and like that novel is a fictional presentation of life in the Jazz Age. If you mention the title Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to the average person nowadays, he or she is almost certain to assume you are referring to the classic 1953 film that catapulted Marilyn Monroe to superstardom and that gave us the iconic pink-gowned musical rendition of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Directed by acclaimed director Howard Hawks ( Red River, Sergeant York, To Have and Have Not) and co-starring screen legend Jane Russell, the film was actually based not on the book but on the hit 1949 Broadway musical, which was based loosely on Anita Loos’s 1925 novel. ![]()
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