1953 was an important year for Marilyn Monroe.
She’d been appearing in films since 1947, but ’53 is when she became a star.
That year, she appeared in three films for 20th Century Fox and one of them stands tall as defining her legendary screen persona: director Howard Hawks’ “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”Monroe plays Lorelei Lee, the titular blonde and one of the film’s two co-leads; the other is her brunette best friend Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell).
Lorelei is a bit ditzy and not shy about her expensive tastes (in men and otherwise), but there’s no more loyal friend around.Earlier that year, Monroe starred in the technicolor thriller “Niagara” as the murderous Rose Loomis, who conspires with her lover (Richard Allen) to murder her husband (Joseph Cotton).
Hawks’ film, though, was a musical comedy.
Since she was playing a totally different type of character, Monroe needed to show a different side of herself.
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