Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had been filmed before the musical, in 1928, when its roaring 20s satire would have been even more pointed. For many, this breathless novel epitomises the highs and the lows of the jazz age, though it’s now most famous in its 1953 musical film incarnation starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Loos is best known today for her wickedly funny novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, written during her Hollywood years, which follows the escapades of gold-digging, flaxen-haired showgirl Lorelei Lee and her man-mad brunette chum Dorothy. Loos may not have been the most successful screenwriter during Hollywood’s silent years (that honour falls to Frances Marion), but she was one of its greatest wits, most popular characters and one of its key storytellers. Scriptwriting, Loos’s forte, was the most feminine department: a “manless Eden” of female screenplay writers, scenario authors, story editors, intertitle artists and “script girls”. “That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.” Loos was a veteran of silent-era Hollywood, when women worked at all levels of the film industry – directing, editing, producing and designing. “They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men,” she said. Anita Loos, the screenwriter and author, claimed – in typically waggish style – to be furious at the women’s lib movement.
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