LGM Film Club, Part 272: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Howard Hawks’ 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe is one of the classics I had never seen. So I fixed that. And…….boy howdy this is hard to watch in 2022. I assume most of you have seen this so I doubt I need to provide any kind of a plot summary. It’s like a teleport back to the male gaze of the period and the women who had to deal with that and so organized their lives around it. I can see why Monroe was so very frustrated with her career, since she is just a pure sex symbol, even though she could act alright. This also feels like a weird film for Hawks direct since I so associate him with tough films like Scarface and The Big Sleep and Red River or high end comedy like His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby. But then, Hawks basically did everything over his career, so this is probably just my own blindness to some of that than an actual outlier. In any case though, this is the most 50s film the 50s could produce.