Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

And which gentlemen would not prefer a blonde if she was in the shape of Marilyn Monroe? Really there’s no need to write any thing about Howard Hawks adaptation of the 1949 Broadway stage musical of the same name, just watch the You Tube clip of the big production number featuring Marilyn of Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend in her iconic pink dress against the beautiful red back drop and your know exactly what I mean, it will being a tear to your eye! 

 

Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend 

Three of the original stage numbers by Jule Styne and Leo Robin are included but there were two new numbers by Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson. Its been modernised by Charles Lederer who wrote the screenplay based on the 1949 stage production reusing the principal characters and it was choreographed by the Jack Cole who was known as the father of theatrical jazz dance.

 

Jane Russell.

As well as Marilyn Monroe who plays Lorelei Lee we get a double dose of beautiful actress in the form of Jane Russell who plays Dorothy Shaw. Lee is a fortune hunter and Shaw is after a husband, both sail to Paris on a luxury liner. The story involves a private detective (Elliott Reid) who is collecting evidence to stop Lorelei Lee marrying the son (Tommy Noonan) of a millionaire, an oversexed diamond mine owner (the great comedy actor Charles Coburn) and a men’s Olympic team all of which are traveling to France. I wouldn’t worry too much about the plot; it’s that kind of movie.

Some great dance numbers.

Both Monroe and Russell have some great lines with Russell demonstrating great comic timing. But you can’t take your eyes off Marilyn; she must have the most gorgeous backside ever seen in the movie industry?   Maybe that is a sexist remark but you must remember that the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was made in 1953 when it wasn’t deemed a crime to comment on a women beauty! It was described in the original trailer as ‘an ear full and an eye full of tuneful delights’ how quaint is that?

 

Best of friends.

This was Marilyn’s first extravagantly expensive musical and she had to convince head of studio Darryl Zanuck she could sing by doing an unaccompanied rendition of the movie’s big number in his office - wow! The press tried to build up a feud between the two leading ladies, but they developed a strong friendship with Jane Russell saying that it was an interesting experience working with Monroe.  Following this movie Marilyn became the potent box office force in Hollywood with reviews in the main, very good. One critic remarked “Marilyn looks like she would glow in the dark, and her version of the baby faced blonde whose eyes open for diamonds and close for kisses is always as amusing as it is alluring”.[1]

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[1] Otis Guernsey.

Don’t Bother to Knock.

In her first dramatic role Marilyn Monroe plays an emotionally disturbed babysitter, Nell Forbes who unbeknown to the child’s parents, Ruth and Peter Jones, is suffering from a traumatic psychoneurosis brought on by the death of her fiancé. When Nell invites Jed Towers, who reminds her of her dead pilot to the Jones room, they are at a convention downstairs in New Yorks upmarket McKinley Hotel, he is happy to oblige this beautiful young woman. Until the child’s safety becomes an issue he is unaware of her fragile mental state.

 

The babysitter....

....reads a bedtime story.

Roy Ward Baker, best known for A Night to Remember (1958) and The Singer Not the Song (1961) which featured a delightfully camp performance from Dirk Bogarde, directed Monroe in her 13^th credited film at a time when she was trying to prove her dramatic acting skills. Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) was her first starring role and to be honest she is the main reason to see this rather forgotten movie. She gives a very believable performance as a mentally deranged person and it is alleged that she based her character on how her mentally troubled mother behaved.

 

Nell Forbes gets to know her neighbour.

This melodramatic noir type thriller was based on a novel entitled Mischief written by Charlotte Armstrong and published in 1951, the screenplay was written by Daniel Taradash. Along side Monroe it starred Richard Widmark as the pilot Jed Towers, Anne Bancroft, in her first feature film as Lyn Lesley, Towers love interest and the bar singer at the Manhattan hotel.   

 

But Jed Towers is in love with ....

....the hotels singer.

The studio gave it a tag line that tried to cash in on both her looks and her acting skill ‘Every inch a woman, ever inch an actress’ they also described her as ‘a wicked sensation as the lonely girl in Room 809’ not sure if they really knew how to market the ever improving star.  It was bookended by a rom-com We’re not Married (1952) and the screwball comedy Monkey Business (1952). Even in what was regarded as her breakthrough role, Niagara (1953) 20th Century-Fox still treated her like a sex object , at least in Don’t Bother to Knock they allowed her to act without the sexual connotations that had accompanied her career to date.

Perhaps Nell was not cut out for babysitting? 

During the filming in early 1952, the revelation that Marilyn had posed nude for a calendar five years earlier hit the media. Although the studio tried to persuade her to deny the story she would not, explaining that she was broke and needed the money. She also admitted that she was not ashamed of it. Her truthfulness and the beauty of the photo turned a potential career-ruining act into a great deal of public sympathy and publicity for MM.

My Week with Marilyn

Marilyn Monroe.

On August 5^th 1962 at 4:25 am a Los Angeles Police Department police sergeant received a call from a psychiatrist proclaiming that American’s greatest female sex symbol and star was found dead at her home. Marilyn Monroe was 36 years old; the recorded cause of death was ‘acute barbiturate poisoning resulting from a probable suicide’. Her demise, similar in respect to James Dean’s fatal car crash, essentially froze her immense stardom and flawless beauty in time as an icon of her era leading to the subsequent cult appreciation of her image as distinct from her films. Monroe was, and still is, part of the Hollywood mythology that was the American dream.

Michelle Williams as Monroe.

Monday nights RBC Film Club showing of My Week with Marilyn (2011) is a fine example of the continuing fascination with this great star. Introduced by Audrey Young who skilfully filled in the background to give us a better understanding of what we were about to see.  In 1956 Marilyn came to the Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire England to star in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) an American film co-starring Laurence Olivier who was also the films director and producer. It was written by Terence Rattigan who based the script on his play The Sleeping Prince, which incidentally was the original name of the film. Monroe plays Elsie Marina a young showgirl who captivates the Prince Regent of Carpathia (Olivier). Although the wealthy Prince is a stickler for formality, he is a lonely man so he invites the showgirl to his Embassy for a very late supper. Although it has been stated that Olivier did not get on very well with his Hollywood star because of her unpredictable ways, he praised her as "a brilliant comedienne, which to me means she is also an extremely skilled actress" and that "Marilyn was quite wonderful, the best of all." Critics hailed Marilyn’s performance and the movie was nominated for five BAFTA Awards including Best Foreign Actress for Monroe.

Kenneth Branagh as Olivier.

That Monroe pose.

My Week with Marilyn is a British drama directed by Simon Curtis, who was responsible for the award winning 2008 TV drama A Short Stay in Switzerland, which starred Julie Walters. Colin Clark, the 23-year-old son of the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, worked as third assistant director on the original 1957 movie and wrote two books on his experiences the first in 1995 called The Prince, The Showgirl and Me, the second entitled My Week with Marilyn. It was this second memoir written in 2000 that Adrian Hodges adapted to form the basis for Monday night film. It allegedly focuses on Colin Clark’s relationship with Monroe during a week he spent alone with her after her husband Arthur Miller went back to America.

Its difficult to put into words how enjoyable I found this splendidly accurate 1950’s period piece, certainly a credit to Britain’s marvelous acting talent who as good as they were, were impressively over shadowed by the American actress Michelle Williams who may not have Monroe’s voluptuous curves, but convincingly portrays both her child like vulnerability and her star status, a pitch perfect and mesmerising performance that disserves recognition as the awards season approaches. Also it’s difficult to separate Kenneth Branagh from Laurence Olivier obviously a part he was born to play. Eddie Redmayne plays the wide-eyed Clark with youthful enthusiasm and as I said previously we get top class performances from many other well-known actors. It’s an emotional and moving look at one of the cinemas most enduring icons and I would whole-heartedly recommend this film to lovers of good quality cinematic entertainment. If you don’t catch it in your local film theatre the DVD is due for release on the 12^th March 2012.

The Prince and the Showgirl.