Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Comedy musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes arrived in cinemas in the summer of 1953 on the back of a successful Broadway run. Set largely aboard an Ocean Liner and Paris, the movie follows the fortunes of two beautiful showgirls. Although the best of friends, the two women couldn’t be more different from one another. Blonde bombshell Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) is a childlike airhead, desperate to marry rich. Her friend Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) is much smarter and more down to earth, interested in love not money. The two head to Paris with Dorothy sent along as a chaperone by Lorelei’s rich and naïve fiancé (Tommy Noonan). Also aboard the ship is a handsome P.I (Elliot Reid), who’s there at the behest of Lorelei’s potential father-in-law.

The film is famous today for Monroe’s iconic and much copied rendition of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend. Along with this song, there are several others in which the two stars sing seductively, strutting across the stage in glamorous and often revealing attire. Many of the songs weren’t to my liking but I had no complaints about the visuals. Around the pair is some excellent choreography. Russell’s rendition of Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love is set inside the ship’s gymnasium and she’s surrounded by the American Olympic Team of whom she makes interesting and amusing props. The actress looks to be in her element. The number also features a mistake in which the actress is knocked into a pool. Director Howard Hawks liked the take though and kept the accident in the finished film. The opening number I’m Just a Little Girl From Little Rock is well staged and sets the film off to a flying start.

The Seven Year Itch

Having recently realised that I’ve loved almost every Billy Wilder film I’ve seen, I’ve been seeking out more of his work. It suddenly dawned on me earlier today that I owned one of his films which I hadn’t seen for a few years but remembered fondly. That film was The Seven Year Itch. I first saw the romantic comedy about five years ago and it had been on my shelf ever since. Unfortunately for my memory and for my love of the film’s director, I’d remembered it as a better film than I actually think it is.

The Seven Year Itch is based on the Broadway play of the same name and stars Tom Ewell as Richard Sherman, a slightly awkward man on the cusp of middle age. An abject worrier and daydreamer with an overactive imagination, Sherman sends his wife and young son off to Maine for the summer in order to escape the New York heat. When returning from work that night he meets a beautiful young woman (Marilyn Monroe) in the hallway of his building and begins to have thoughts that belie his faithful and honest nature.

All About Eve

All About Eve is a 1950 drama that for nearly fifty years stood as the lone record holder for most Academy Award nominations. At the 23^rd Academy Awards it was nominated for a total of fourteen awards, a feat unmatched until Titanic equalled it in 1997. The film wouldn’t be a successful as James Cameron’s sprawling, water based epic however and won just six of it’s nominations including the important Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Sixty four years on and today I watched the film for the first time to see what all the fuss is about. My immediate impression upon completing the film was that of surprise for its multiple nominations and victories but stepping back a little, the film features a lot to like, not least some fantastic writing and superb acting performances.

The film strangely shares many themes with another 1950 release, Sunset Boulevard, and indeed the two would battle it out in eight of the categories at the Oscar’s ceremony I just spoke of. Another film that All About Eve congers memories of is stranger still and that is Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. All three movies feature stories about revered and ageing stars who are or at least feel threatened by perkier, younger women. Here, the marvellous Bette Davis plays Broadway star Margot Channing, a talented actress with an outwardly sense of entitlement but who is inwardly frail and uneasy, worried for her place in the theatre world. Her fears come to the forefront of her mind when she is confronted with the attributes and ambitions of Eve Harrington (Ann Baxter). Harrington begins the film as a timid and star struck young girl but what lurks beneath her downtrodden and excited appearance is a viciously ambitious starlet.

Some Like It Hot

A Hollywood remake of the 1935 French movie Fanfare d'Amour, Some Like It Hot is widely regarded as amongst the funniest and most cherished films in the history of cinema. Written, Produced and Directed by one of cinema’s finest, Billy Wilder, it stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as destitute musicians, eking out a living in prohibition era Chicago. Having accidentally witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the two men go on the lamb and hop on a train to Florida. In order to go unnoticed by the Mob they disguise themselves as women and join an all female band heading to Miami. Amongst the band members is Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) who both men (obviously) fall for.

I’ve wanted to see Some Like It Hot for a long time and having finally got around to it last night, I can report that I wasn’t disappointed. Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s script is rich, saucy and hilarious while full of the sort of bawdy double entendre that would have been impossible to get passed censors in the years before. In fact, along with the likes of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Wilder’s own The Apartment, it was just this sort of movie which saw to the decline and eventually dismemberment of the dreaded Hays/Breen Code that had constricted Hollywood since the early 1930s.

Six of the Best... Most Beautiful Actresses

Seven weeks. That's all it took for this feature to get onto the topic of sexy ladies. If I'm honest, I'm surprised that I managed to hold out for as long as I did. This week's topic has been the most fun to research but the most difficult to decide on so far. Even up to a couple of minutes before I started writing there was a last minute change (sorry Oona) and I've decided to break the rules slightly because of my indecisiveness/perviness. Instead of the usual six I've chosen twelve and in a vain attempt to quantify the decision besides greediness, I've decided to feature six current and six former actresses. I brand myself on reviewing one hundred years of film so it would only be right. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. For fear of losing my female readers who may think (rightly) that I'm just using this feature as an excuse to look at pretty ladies, next week's list will redress the balance and feature Six of the Best... Actors my Girlfriend Wishes I Was. Her six currently also stands at twelve and there are lots of 'ooh' 'ahh' and 'yummy' noises coming from her direction whenever I bring up the topic. So make sure you come back next week for the actors but now, here are Six (Twelve) of the Best... Most Beautiful Actresses, beginning with those still working.

Six of the Best... Actors Who Died Too Young

Highlander, Dorian Gray, Interview with a Vampire… There are plenty of movies that feature themes of eternal youth or everlasting life but unfortunately they’re fantasy. People are born, they live and then they die. Although we can extend the middle part of that previous sentence through medicine, we can’t remove the final part altogether. While many of us will live to reach a ripe old age,  grumpily hating the world that has left us behind, sadly some people die in their prime. In this week’s Six of the Best I’m looking at six of the best actors who died too young. Although these actors died in their heyday or at the peak of their careers, their death has in many cases bought them an almost everlasting, close to immortal status which their names may have lacked had they lived to grow old, thus granting eternal youth. So here are Six of the Best… Actors Who Died Too Young. Let me know who you would have included.

1. Rudolph Vantentino. (Died in 1926 – aged 31)

The world has largely forgotten cinema’s first male sex symbol. The Italian born actor appeared in close to forty films between 1914 and 1926 including The Sheik and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in 1921. His death at the age of thirty-one caused mass hysteria among his female fans to whom he was affectionately known as the ‘Latin Lover’. Valentino’s life has been the subject of several films but his popularity has been overshadowed by those whose careers continued on into the late 20s and early sound era.