Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (20th Century-Fox) is apparently predicated on the theory that if half the moviegoing population prefers Marilyn Monroe and half prefers Jane Russell, then just about everybody will be devastated by a picture that features both. There is, in fact, a danger that some impressionable moviegoers, unable to make up their minds which of the stars they prefer, may go quietly hysterical, like laboratory mice caught between two morsels of cheese.
But, for all the three-dimensional attractions of its two leading ladies, this is a rather flat cinemusical. This version adds flashy songs, dances, Technicolor, a present-day setting and a happy ending to Anita Loos's famed 1925 bestseller about the fine art of gold digging during the jazz age. It also subtracts much of the original's satire, intelligence and wit.
Even before the credit titles are flashed on, Marilyn and Jane are on the screen in spangled scarlet dresses slit to a fare-thee-well above and below decks, hammering out a number entitled The Little Girls from Little Rock. From then on, the picture is so busy leering at Marilyn and Jane that it never gets around to being much of a picture. The result, while still fun, is a burlesque of burlesque, a kind of Minsky in mink.
As Lorelei Lee, who believes that diamonds are a girl's best friend, Marilyn Monroe does the best job of her short career to date. Her almost surrealist figure, quite as implausible as a Petty girl's, fascinates every male aboard a transatlantic luxury liner, from a monocled old millionaire (Charles Coburn) to a six-year-old boy with a valet and a foghorn voice (George Winslow). In the process, she also sings remarkably well,* dances, or rather undulates all over, flutters the heaviest eyelids in show business, and breathlessly delivers such lines of dialogue as "Coupons—that's almost like money," as if she were in the throes of a grand passion. As Lorelei's chaperone, who wants her to go off the gold standard, Jane Russell does a frenetic, blond-wigged imitation of Marilyn and, surrounded by a beefcake chorus of athletes, sings Anyone Here for Love? in fine deadpan style. Sample dialogue: First Athlete: "If the ship hits an iceberg and sinks, which girl would you save from drowning?" Second Athlete with a smirk: "Those girls couldn't drown."
Ride, Vaquero! (MGM) makes the old horse operas on TV look good. It takes some of Hollywood's silkiest purses and, without half trying, promptly and efficiently turns them into sow's ears. It has a beautiful star (Ava Gardner), yet somehow manages to make her seem drab, and a basically exciting story (bandits v. ranchers) which, in this version, has no more suspense than a mystery story read backwards. Ava is the wife of a handsome, brave, wooden-faced Texas rancher (Howard Keel), who gets into a feud with a Mexican bandit (Anthony Quinn), a fellow who uses vino as a gargle. This bandit has a lieutenant, a handsome, brave, wooden-faced desperado (Robert Taylor). Gardner takes one look at Taylor and her earrings start aquivering.