Horns blare as two showgirls emerge from behind curtains dressed in identical shimmering red gowns. They knowingly look at one another, step forward, throw their white fur wraps to the ground and begin singing and sashaying to the oh so effervescent “Two Little Girls from Little Rock.” This tantalizing display of bold jazzy music, glittering costumes, and the radiant star power of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe as the showgirls makes it instantly clear this is going to be one dazzlingly fun film even before the opening credits roll.
And Gentlemen Prefer Blondes doesn’t disappoint for a second. This iconic movie was a major box-office hit, the seventh highest-grossing film of 1953, and remains mighty entertainment. It’s also the film that crystalized the persona and major star status of one of the biggest stars in cinema history, Marilyn Monroe.
The film received positive reviews from critics. Monroe and Russell were both praised for their performances even by critics who panned the film.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Howard Hawks’ direction “uncomfortably cloddish and slow” and found the gags for Russell “devoid of character or charm,” but concluded, “And yet, there is that about Miss Russell and also about Miss Monroe that keeps you looking at them even when they have little or nothing to do.”
Variety wrote that Hawks “maintains a racy air that brings the musical off excellently at a pace that helps cloak the fact that it’s rather lightweight, but sexy, stuff. However, not much more is needed when patrons can look at Russell-Monroe lines as displayed in slick costumes and Technicolor.”
Harrison's Reports wrote: “Both Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe are nothing short of sensational in the leading roles. They not only act well, but the sexy manner in which they display their song, dance and pulchritude values just about sets the screen on fire and certainly is crowd-pleasing, judging by the thunderous applause at the preview after each of the well-staged musical numbers.”
John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote that the two leads “have a good deal of enthusiasm, and occasionally their exuberance offsets the tedium of one long series of variations on the sort of anatomical joke that used to amuse the customers of Minsky so inordinately.”
Britain’s Monthly Film Bulletin praised Jane Russell for her “enjoyable Dorothy, full of gusto and good nature,” but thought that the film had been compromised from the play “by the casting of Marilyn Monroe, by the abandonment of the 20s period and the incongruous up-to-date streamlining, by inflating some bright, witty songs into lavish production numbers, and by tamely ending the whole thing by letting two true loves conventionally come true. There is too, a lack of grasp in Howard Hawks’ handling, which is scrappy and uninventive.”
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