Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

by Anita Loos

I had become obsessed with Marilyn, not only as a sublime comedienne but also as an icon of social, political, and sexual subversion. I watched her films incessantly, revelling in what I perceived to be their subliminal insurgent message. In most of her roles, but especially as Lorelei Lee, Marilyn seemed to have ascertained that the world was one big bastion of hypocrisy, especially when it came to women, so she put a new spin on an old adage: if you can’t beat ’em, make ’em pay, pay, pay. She conformed exquisitely to patriarchal expectations of her, honed her seductive powers and female wiles, cultivated her beauty and charm, prettified her razor-sharp wit, and, while never compromising her Leibnizian belief that beneath all the crap and rot humanity could shovel up this was, after all, the best of all possible worlds, she hung everybody out to dry.

In Loos’s prefatory essay “The Biography of a Book,” she claims that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was begun as a brief sketch on a train in response to the inordinate attention that a blonde sitting nearby was given by fellow male travellers while she was all but ignored. Knowing that her pal H. L. Mencken had a similar weakness for peroxide, she sent him the story, which he admired but declined to print in the American Mercury. “Little girl,” he wrote to Loos, “you’re making fun of sex and that’s never been done before in the U.S.A. I suggest you send it to Harper’s Bazar, where it’ll be lost among the ads and won’t offend anybody.” Henry Sell, editor of what was then called Harper’s Bazar: A Repository of Fashion, Pleasure and Instruction, was eager to publish Loos’s story and, wanting to serialize it, insisted she continue the chronicle of Lorelei’s quest to “improve her mind” and her “ambision” to “reform” her friend and foil Dorothy as they travel to London, Paris (“The Eyefull tower is devine”), Vienna, Budapest, and back home to New York.

The book in its entirety was published by Boni & Liveright, renowned for their modernist authors. In that same year, 1925, they published works by Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, Eliot, and Pound. The first printing, a modest 1,200 copies, was followed within two weeks by a second of 20,000, succeeded by many more reprints. Over the next quarter century the book would continue to sell well and was adapted into a play, a silent film (now lost), a musical, a comic strip, a dress fabric, and a wallpaper. The 1953 release of the screen version starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell eclipsed the book thereafter.

Soon after its publication, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was admired and praised by many contemporary distinguished writers and critics: Aldous Huxley was “enraptured”; James Joyce couldn’t get off the couch for “three whole days” while reading it; on a cruise in the Aegean, Edith Wharton alternated between reading “The Odyssey or Blondes” and she hailed it as both “a masterpiece” and “the Great American Novel (at last!)”; George Santayana thought the book the preeminent work of philosophy by an American; Rose Macaulay called it “probably the funniest book that has appeared in England or America”; and H. L. Mencken, reviewing the book anonymously in the American Mercury, labeled it “a farce full of shrewd observation and devastating irony.”

In fact, if one examines the plot of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it is almost as gloomy as a novel by Dostoievski. When the book reached Russia, this was recognized, and it was embraced by Soviet authorities as evidence of the exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the Capitalistic System. The Russians, with their native love of grief, stripped Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of all its fun and the plot which they uncovered was dire. It concerns early rape of its idiot heroine, an attempt by her to commit murder (only unsuccessful because she is clumsy with a gun), the heroine’s being cast adrift in the gangster-infested New York of Prohibition days, her relentless pursuit by predatory males (the foremost of whom constantly tries to pay her off at bargain rates) her renunciation of the only man who ever stirred her inner soul of a woman, her nauseous connection with a male who is repulsive to her physically, mentally and emotionally and her final engulfment in the grim monotony of suburban Philadelphia. Given the above material, any real novelist such as Sherwood Anderson, Dreiser, Faulkner or Hemingway probably would have curdled his readers’ blood with massive indignation. Scott Fitzgerald would have, and indeed he did make his readers shed bittersweet tears over such sad eventualities. But I, with my infantile cruelty, have never been able to view even the most impressive human behavior as anything but foolish.

So, as Lorelei appeared one month in Harper’s Bazaar, Anita was frantically writing the next month’s installment. By the third month, ads for men’s apparel, cars, and sporting goods began pouring into the magazine. This was the first time men had ever read the Bazaar—the newsstand sales doubled, then tripled. James Joyce, who had begun to lose his eyesight, saved his reading for Lorelei Lee. And George Santayana, when asked what was the best book of philosophy written by an American, answered, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

Following its American publication, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes became a bestseller in thirteen languages. (Note to Khrushchev: Where are my royalties, Tovarich?) In China the story ran as a serial in the newspaper edited by Lin Yutang, who assured me that Lorelei’s prose went quite normally into the vernacular of the Sing Song girls. The world and its ways have changed a great deal since Lorelei Lee made her first appearance on the scene. Recently during a television interview in London, the question was put to me: “Miss Loos, your book was based on an economic situation, the unparalleled prosperity of the Twenties. If you were to write such a book today, what would be your theme?” And without hesitation, I was forced to answer, “Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen” (a statement which brought the session abruptly to a close). But if that fact is true, as it very well seems to be, it, too, is based soundly on economics, the criminally senseless population explosion which a beneficent Nature is trying to curb by more pleasant means than war.

Well last evening Dorothy called up and Dorothy said she has met a gentleman who gave himself an introduction to her in the lobby of the Ritz. So then they went to luncheon and tea and dinner and then they went to a show and then they went to the Trocadero. So Dorothy said his name was Lord Cooksleigh but what she really calls him is Coocoo. So Dorothy said why don’t you and I and Coocoo go to the Follies tonight and bring Gus along if he is in town? So then Dorothy and I had quite a little quarrel because every time that Dorothy mentions the subject of Mr. Eisman she calls Mr. Eisman by his first name, and she does not seem to realize that when a gentleman who is as important as Mr. Eisman, spends quite a lot of money educating a girl, it really does not show reverance to call a gentleman by first name. I mean I never even think of calling Mr. Eisman by his first name, but if I want to call him anything at all, I call him “Daddy” and I do not even call him “Daddy” if a place seems to be public. So I told Dorothy that Mr. Eisman would not be in town until day after tomorrow. So then Dorothy and Coocoo came up and we went to the Follies.

And Mr. Eisman likes me to have what the French people call a “salo” which means that people all get together in the evening and improve their minds. So I invited all of the brainy gentlemen I could think up. So I thought up a gentlemen who is the proffessor of all of the economics up at Columbia College, and the editor who is the famous editor of the New York Transcript and another gentleman who is a famous playright who writes very, very famous plays that are all about Life. I mean anybody would recognize his name but it always seems to slip my memory because all of we real friends of his only call him Sam. So Sam asked if he could bring a gentleman who writes novels from England, so I said yes, so he brought him. And then we all got together and I called up Gloria and Dorothy and the gentlemen brought their own liquor. So of course the place was a wreck this morning and Lulu and I worked like proverbial dogs to get it cleaned up, but Heaven knows how long it will take to get the chandelier fixed.

So the English gentleman’s name is Mr. Gerald Lamson as those who have read his novels would know. And he also sent me some of his own novels and they all seem to be about middle age English gentlemen who live in the country over in London and seem to ride bicycles, which seems quite different from America, except at Palm Beach. So I told Mr. Lamson how I write down all of my thoughts and he said he knew I had something to me from the first minute he saw me and when we become better acquainted I am going to let him read my diary. I mean I even told Mr. Eisman about him and he is quite pleased. Because of course Mr. Lamson is quite famous and it seems Mr. Eisman has read all of his novels going to and fro on the trains and Mr. Eisman is always anxious to meet famous people and take them to the Ritz to dinner on Saturday night. But of course I did not tell Mr. Eisman that I am really getting quite a little crush on Mr. Lamson, which I really believe I am, but Mr. Eisman thinks my interest in him is more literary.

So Gerry says that I remind him quite a lot of Helen of Troy, who was of Greek extraction. But the only Greek I know is a Greek gentleman by the name of Mr. Georgopolis who is really quite wealthy and he is what Dorothy and I call a “Shopper” because you can always call him up at any hour and ask him to go shopping and he is always quite delighted, which very few gentlemen seem to be. And he never seems to care how much anything costs. I mean Mr. Georgopolis is also quite cultured, as I know quite a few gentlemen who can speak to a waiter in French but Mr. Georgopolis can also speak to a waiter in Greek which very few gentlemen seem to be able to do.

So Dorothy is out taking a walk up and down the deck with a gentleman she met on the steps, but I am not going to waste my time going around with gentlemen because if I did nothing but go around I would not finish my diary or read good books which I am always reading to improve my mind. But Dorothy really does not care about her mind and I always scold her because she does nothing but waste her time by going around with gentlemen who do not have anything, when Eddie Goldmark of the Goldmark Films is really quite wealthy and can make a girl delightful presents. But she does nothing but waste her time and yesterday, which was really the day before we sailed, she would not go to luncheon with Mr. Goldmark but she went to luncheon to meet a gentleman called Mr. Mencken from Baltimore who really only prints a green magazine which has not even got any pictures in it. But Mr. Eisman is always saying that every girl does not want to get ahead and get educated like me.

So I was in the business colledge in Little Rock for about a week when a gentleman called Mr. Jennings paid a call on the business colledge because he wanted to have a new stenographer. So he looked over all we colledge girls and he picked me out. So he told our teacher that he would help me finish my course in his office because he was only a lawyer and I really did not have to know so much. So Mr. Jennings helped me quite a lot and I stayed in his office about a year when I found out that he was not the kind of a gentleman that a young girl is safe with. I mean one evening when I went to pay a call on him at his apartment, I found a girl there who really was famous all over Little Rock for not being nice. So when I found out that girls like that paid calls on Mr. Jennings I had quite a bad case of hysterics and my mind was really a blank and when I came out of it, it seems that I had a revolver in my hand and it seems that the revolver had shot Mr. Jennings.

So they took up quite a collection and Mr. Bartlett made quite a long speech in favor of orphans especially when their parents are sailors. Mr. Bartlett really likes to make speeches quite a lot. I mean he even likes to make speeches when he is all alone with a girl when they are walking up and down a deck. But the maskerade ball was quite cute and one gentleman really looked almost like an imitation of Mr. Chaplin. So Dorothy and I really did not want to go to the ball but Mr. Bartlett bought us two scarfs at the little store which is on the ship so we tied them around our hips and everyone said we made quite a cute Carmen. So Mr. Bartlett and Major Falcon and the tennis champion were the Judges. So Dorothy and I won the prizes. I mean I really hope I do not get any more large size imitations of a dog as I have three now and I do not see why the Captain does not ask Mr. Cartier to have a jewelry store on the ship as it is really not much fun to go shopping on a ship with gentlemen, and buy nothing but imitations of dogs.

I mean the French gentlemen always seem to be squealing quite a lot, especially taxi drivers when they only get a small size yellow dime called a ‘fifty santeems’ for a tip. But the good thing about French gentlemen is that every time a French gentleman starts in to squeal, you can always stop him with five francs, no matter who he is. I mean it is so refreshing to listen to a French gentleman stop squeaking, that it would really be quite a bargain even for ten francs.

So Dorothy said she would go down in the lobby and meet some gentleman to show us Paris. So in a couple of minutes she called up on the telephone from the lobby and she said “I have got a French bird down here who is a French title nobleman, who is called a veecount so come on down.” So I said “How did a Frenchman get into the Ritz.” So Dorothy said “He came in to get out of the rain and he has not noticed that it is stopped.” So I said “I suppose you have picked up something without taxi fare as usual. Why did you not get an American gentleman who always have money?” So Dorothy said she thought a French gentleman had ought to know Paris better. So I said “He does not even know it is not raining.” But I went down. So the veecount was really delightful after all. So then we rode around and we saw Paris and we saw how devine it really is. I mean the Eyefull Tower is devine and it is much more educational than the London Tower, because you can not even see the London Tower if you happen to be two blocks away. But when a girl looks at the Eyefull Tower she really knows she is looking at something. And it would even be very difficult not to notice the Eyefull Tower.

So the French veecount is going to call up in the morning but I am not going to see him again. Because French gentlemen are really quite deceeving. I mean they take you to quite cute places and they make you feel quite good about yourself and you really seem to have a delightful time but when you get home and come to think it all over, all you have got is a fan that only cost 20 francs and a doll that they gave you away for nothing in a restaurant. I mean a girl has to look out in Paris, or she would have such a good time in Paris that she would not get anywheres. So I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever. Besides, I do not think that I ought to go out with any gentlemen in Paris because Mr. Eisman will be here next week and he told me that the only kind of gentlemen he wants me to go out with are intellectual gentlemen who are good for a girls brains. So I really do not seem to see many gentlemen around the Ritz who seem to look like they would be good for a girl’s brains.

So Dorothy said we might as well go out to Fountainblo with Louie and Robber if Louie would take off his yellow spats that were made out of yellow shammy skin with pink pearl buttons. Because Dorothy said, “Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all of the time.” So Louie is really always anxious to please, so he took off his spats but when he took off his spats, we saw his socks and when we saw his socks we saw that they were Scotch plaid with small size rainbows running through them. So Dorothy looked at them a little while and she really became quite discouraged and she said, “Well Louie, I think you had better put your spats back on.”

So Dorothy and I are going to take an oriental express tomorrow and I really think it is quite unusual for two American girls like I and Dorothy to take an oriental express all alone, because it seems that in the Central of Europe they talk some other kinds of landguages which we do not understand besides French. But I always think that there is nearly always some gentleman who will protect two American girls like I and Dorothy who are all alone and who are traveling in the Central of Europe to get educated.

So now we are on an oriental express and everything seems to be quite unusual. I mean Dorothy and I got up this morning and we looked out of the window of our compartment and it was really quite unusual. Because it was farms, and we saw quite a lot of girls who seemed to be putting small size hay stacks onto large size hay stacks while their husbands seemed to sit at a table under quite a shady tree and drink beer. Or else their husbands seemed to sit on a fence and smoke their pipe and watch them. So Dorothy and I looked at two girls who seemed to be ploughing up all of the ground with only the aid of a cow and Dorothy said, “I think we girls have gone one step to far away from New York, because it begins to look to me as if the Central of Europe is no country for we girls.” So we both became quite worried. I mean I became quite depressed because if this is what Mr. Eisman thinks we American girls ought to learn I really think it is quite depressing. So I do not think we care to meet any gentlemen who have been born and raised in the Central of Europe. I mean the more I travel and the more I seem to see other gentlemen the more I seem to think of American gentlemen.

And all of we girls remember the time when he was in the Ritz for luncheon and he met a gentleman friend of his and the gentleman friend had Peggy Hopkins Joyce to luncheon and he introduced Peggy Hopkins Joyce to Mr. Spoffard and Mr. Spoffard turned on his heels and walked away. Because Mr. Spoffard is a very very famous Prespyterian and he is really much to Prespyterian to meet Peggy Hopkins Joyce. I mean it is unusual to see a gentleman who is such a young gentleman as Mr. Spoffard be so Prespyterian, because when most gentlemen are 35 years of age their minds nearly always seem to be on something else.

So then we went into the Kunst theater. But the Kunst theater does not seem to smell so good as the lobby of the Kunst theater. And the Kunst theater seems to be decorated with quite a lot of what tripe would look like if it was pasted on the wall and gilded. Only you could not really see the gilding because it was covered with quite a lot of dust. So Dorothy looked around and Dorothy said, if this is “kunst,” the art center of the world is Union Hill New Jersey.

May 20th: Well today Mr. Spoffard is going to take me all around to all of the museums in Munchen, which are full of kunst that I really ought to look at, but Dorothy said she had been punished for all of her sins last night, so now she is going to begin life all over again by going out with her German gentleman friend, who is going to take her to a house called the Half Brow house which is the worlds largest size of a Beer Hall. So Dorothy said I could be a high brow and get full of kunst, but she is satisfide to be a Half brow and get full of beer. But Dorothy will really never be full of anything else but unrefinement.

So she really likes champagne very very much but Miss Chapman thinks it is not so nice for a person to drink liquor. But I told her that I was a Christian science, and all of we Christian science seem to believe that there can not really be any harm in anything, so how can there can there be any harm in a small size bottle of champagne? So she never seemed to look at it in that kind of a light before, because she said that Miss Chapman believed in Christian science also, but what Miss Chapman believed about things that were good for you to drink seemed to apply more towards water. So then we had luncheon and she began to feel very very good. So I thought that we had better have another bottle of champagne because I told her that I was such an ardent Christian science that I did not even believe there could be any harm in two bottles of champagne. So we had another bottle of champagne and she became very intreeged about Christian science because she said that she really thought it was a better religion than Prespyterians. So she said Miss Chapman used to try to get her to use it on things, but Miss Chapman never seemed to have such a large size grasp of the Christian science religion as I seem to have.

May 31st: Well I and Dorothy and Mr. Eisman are on a train going to a place called Buda Pest. So I did not see Henry again before I left, but I left him a letter. Because I thought it would be a quite good thing if what he wanted to ask me he would have to write down, instead of asking me, and he could not write it to me if I was in the same city that he is in. So I told him in my letter that I had to leave in five minute’s time because I found out that Dorothy was just on the verge of getting very unreformed, and if I did not get her away, all I had done for her would really go for nothing. So I told him to write down what he had to say to me, and mail it to me at the Ritz hotel in Buda Pest. Because I always seem to believe in the old adage, Say it in writing.

So Henry will not be able to follow me to Buda Pest because his mother is having treatments by Dr. Froyd and she seems to be a much more difficult case than I seem to be. I mean it is quite hard for Dr. Froyd, because she cannot seem to remember which is a dream and which really happened to her. So she tells him everything, and he has to use his judgement. I mean when she tells him that a very very handsome young gentleman tried to flirt with her on Fifth Avenue, he uses his judgement.

June 1st: Well yesterday Henrys letter came and it says in black and white that he and his mother have never met such a girl as I and he wants me to marry him. So I took Henrys letter to the photographers and I had quite a lot of photographs taken of it because a girl might lose Henrys letter and she would not have anything left to remember him by. But Dorothy says to hang on to Henry’s letter, because she really does not think the photographs do it justice.

So Henry spent the evening at the apartment and then he had to go back to Pennsylvania to be there Thursday morning, because every Thursday morning he belongs to a society who do nothing but senshure all of the photoplays. So they cut out all of the pieces out of all the photoplays that show things that are riskay, that people ought not to look at. So then they put all of the riskay pieces together and they run them over and over again. So it would really be quite a hard thing to drag Henry away from one of his Thursday mornings and he can hardly wait from one Thursday morning to another. Because he really does not seem to enjoy anything so much as senshuring photoplays and after a photoplay has once been senshured he seems to lose all of his interest in it.

So it seems that the police all have orders from Judge Schultzmeyer, who is the famous judge who tries all of the prohibition cases, that any time they break into a party that looks like it was going to be a good party, to call him up no matter what time of the day or night it is, because Judge Schultzmeyer dearly loves a party. So the Police called up Judge Schultzmeyer and he was down in less than no time. So during the party both Joe Sanguinetti and Judge Schultz-meyer fell madly in love with Dorothy. So Joe and the Judge had quite a little quarrel and the Judge told Joe that if his stuff was fit to drink he would set the Law after him and confiscate it, but his stuff was not worth the while of any gentleman to confiscate who had any respect for his stomach, and he would not lower himself to confiscate it. So along about nine o’clock in the morning Judge Schultzmeyer had to leave the party and go to court to try all of the criminals who break all of the laws, so he had to leave Dorothy and Joe together and he was very very angry. And I really felt quite sorry for any person who went up before Judge Schultzmeyer that morning, because he gave everybody 90 days and was back at the party by twelve o’clock. So then he stuck to the party until we were all going down to Long Beach to take a swim day before yesterday when he seemed to become unconscious, so we dropped him off at a sanitorium in Garden City.

So then I had to figure out how to get rid of Henry and at the same time not do anything that would make me any trouble later. So I sent for Dorothy because Dorothy is not so good at intreeging a gentleman with money, but she ought to be full of ideas on how to get rid of one. So at first Dorothy said, Why didn’t I take a chance and marry Henry because she had an idea that if Henry married me he would commit suicide about two weeks later. But I told her about my plan to do quite a lot of shopping, and I told her that I would send for Henry and I would manage it so that I would not be in the apartment when he came, but she could be there and start a conversation with him and she could tell him about all of my shopping and how extravagant I seemed to be and he would be in the poor house in less than a year if he married me.