Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

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As New York showgirls Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw travel to Europe, they are shadowed aboard ship by private detective Ernie Malone, hired by the disapproving millionaire father of Lorelei’s fiancé. Lorelei’s material girl behaviour makes it easy for Malone to find proof of her alleged “infidelity”. Meanwhile, Dorothy falls in love with the detective … Much like the private eye’s preferred potable (“just equal parts of scotch, vodka, brandy, and gin”), the film mixes the seemingly incompatible for Marilyn Monroe’s stunning performance of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” in this case the colours hot pink, red, violet, and orange. The result was the birth of “camp”. What its trailer called “the most glamorous musical of our age” celebrated Technicolor as one component of a dazzling work of art or, as Cole Porter put it in a verse cut from the final version of Silk Stockings (1957) because it was deemed “unacceptably vulgar”, “If Zanuck’s latest picture were the good old-fashioned kind, / There’d be no one in front to look at Marilyn’s behind / If you want to hear applauding hands resound / You’ve gotta have glorious Technicolor / Breathtaking Cinemascope and / stereophonic sound”.   Videos
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details

  • Runtime

    91 min
  • Country

    United States
  • Year of Presentation

    2015
  • Year of Production

    1953
  • Director

    Howard Hawks
  • Cast

    Marylin Monroe, Jane Russel, Charles Coburn
  • Production Company

    Sol C. Siegel
  • Berlinale Section

    Retrospective
  • Berlinale Category

Biography Howard Hawks

Howard Winchester Hawks (* May 30, 1896 in Goshen, Indiana; † December 26, 1977 in Palm Springs, California) was an American director of the classic Hollywood era. Hawks distinguished himself across genres as one of the most important American film directors of his generation. He created important classics such as Scarface (Gangster film), Leopards don't get kissed (comedy), The Dead Sleep Soundly (film noir), Rio Bravo (western) and The Thing from Another World (science fiction). For his life's work the director received an honorary oscar in 1975; two years later Hawks died at the age of 81.
source: wikipedia.org

Filmography Howard Hawks

1932 Narbengesicht | 1938 Leoparden küßt man nicht | 1944 To Have and Have Not | 1946 Tote schlafen fest | 1948 Red River | 1953 Blondinen bevorzugt | 1959 Rio Bravo | 1964 Ein Goldfisch an der Leine | 1967 El Dorado