“More Than Just Another Dumb Blonde Joke”: Humor and Gender in Anita Loos’s Novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Howard Hawks’s Film Adaptation
1Humor is a central element, if not the cornerstone, of both Anita Loos' highly humorous, satirical novel Gentlemen prefer Blondes and Howard Hawkes' 1953 film adaptation of the same name which stars Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. In the introduction to her book on women's humor and American culture Nancy A. Walker summarizes the role of the humorist as one who is at "odds with the publicly espoused values of the culture, overturning its sacred cows" (9) and addresses the even more difficult situation for women humorists who have to "break out of the passive, subordinate position." (Walker: 9) Walker sees the role of the female humorist as one who has to "confront and subvert the very power that keeps women powerless, and at the same time to risk alienating those upon whom women are dependent for economic survival. The delicate balance between power and powerlessness informs the themes and forms of women's humorous writing." (Walker: 9) A theme that also very much applies to the poor, uneducated, lower class heroines of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Despite their background, Lorelei and Dorothy enter into the spheres of upper class American and European society and threaten the established order and stability of class and society. This constant is the only common ground in terms of humor between Anita Loos's novel and the 1953 film adaptation as both works use very different forms and registers of humor in order to achieve very different aims. The 1925 novel reads like a guidebook to the liberated and emancipated lifestyle of the 1920s flapper and provides the reader with an unadorned, strongly satirical view of Western culture through the eyes of the seemingly naive protagonist and narrator Lorelei Lee. In contrast, the humor of the film adaptation is of a more situational and slapstick kind and the movie "fits into the clearly defined and theorized category of the Hollywood musical.” (Hegeman: 526) This essay aims to compare and contrast the kinds of humor employed in both versions with a special focus on the relationship of the two main characters, Lorelei and Dorothy. It examines the ways in which male and female characters are portrayed in general and investigates how humor and satire is used in order to challenge the firm order of class and society. It is the aim of this essay to draw a clear, differentiated image of these two very distinct works. This seems to be a worthwhile effort, especially since there is according to Susan Hegeman “almost no recent criticism about the book on which the film was based,” (Hegeman: 526) the essay by Hegeman being one of the few exceptions to this case. A comparative and contrasting approach of both the book and the film seems particularly interesting as there has been very little research in this direction and also Hegeman’s essay deals only partly with this topic. Furthermore, this analysis tries to find possible reasons for this loss in translation as well as to find examples where critical themes and satire can still be found but in another form, due to the "transcription" from the medium book to the medium film. A distinct point of interest in this will be the 1949 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from which the film draws many elements as well as its major songs and the genre of Musical Comedy itself.
2In the November of 1925 Anita Loos’s novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, previously serialized in the Bazaar magazine, was published in a small edition and was sold out overnight. Three more printings were released before the end of the year, which also sold out. (Carey: 95) “Blondes didn’t need critical praise to become the surprise best-seller of 1925,” Gary Carey states in his definitive biography of Anita Loos: “It was one of those books that sold itself through word of mouth, and the word was good along every avenue of American life. Lorelei’s diary made a hit with those who read nothing but light fiction as well as with James Joyce, whose failing eyesight made him highly selective about what he read. Anita was told that her book was one of the few he chose from the list of current fiction. Blondes was enthusiastically endorsed by the literati. Anita received notes of appreciation from William Faulkner and Aldous Huxley. Novelist, photographer; and music critic Carl Van Vechten proclaimed the book ‘a work of art’. And George Santayana […] praised Blondes only half-jestingly as ‘a great work of philosophy”. (Carey: 98) T.E. Blom, an important scholar on the novel “sees Lorelei as an amalgam of characters from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Henry James, and describes Blondes as a picaresque, as a Bildungsroman, and finally ‘a classic American satire’.” (qdt. in Hegeman: 526)
3What made the novel so unusual and outstanding that it received this much praise and fame? Why is it that nowadays the title is irrevocably linked to the 1953 film version with Marilyn Monroe? Is it, as Susan Hegeman states, that “Blondes’s critical reputation as a literary work may be marred for some by its fame as the basis of the popular stage musical starring Carol Channing and the 1953 Howard Hawks musical film starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell”? (Hegeman: 525)
4Anita Loos's novel follows the story of the naive and, in the widest sense, uneducated Lorelei Lee who tells of her life as a "professional lady", the book's subtitle, through the ingenious literary device of diary-form entries. Through this diary the reader is offered a very satirical and often critical view of the 1920s – either through Lorelei's naive impressions and observations or through more ironical comments by Dorothy. Very few of these elements of parody remain in the 1953 film adaptation by Howard Hawks and as already stated – the genre changed from satire to musical comedy. The era of the film seems unspecified and greater emphasis has been laid on the relationship between Lorelei and Dorothy. The film takes further liberties from the source material – a prime example would be the trip through Europe that includes stops in London, Paris, Munich and Vienna in the book and is reduced to a cruise across the Atlantic and a visit to Paris in the movie.
Humor
5Although both the novel and the film adaptation make use of humor as it is a central element, they make use of very different registers and styles of humor. Hegeman describes "Loos's comical use of illiteracies (misspellings, bad grammar misusages) [...] akin to [Gertrude] Stein's stylistic experiments" (Hegeman: 527) and David Tracy sees these factors as a form of vernacular humor: "A key aspect of this humor [being] the appeal of the personas even as they reveal themselves to be uneducated, or at least unlettered, in comparison to the reader – and indeed their ability to stand in for the reader by representing a universalized foolishness and vanity." (Tracy: 126) Tracy finds connections to "a group [...] referred to as the 'literary humorists' or the 'misspellers' [who] publish[ed] from the 1860s to the 1880s. These writers [...] wrote mock essays, letters and dramatic monologues in a style replete with phonetic, and usually dialect-associated, misspellings, misquotations and malapropisms emphasizing the persona's lack of education and understanding." (124) On the other hand he also argues that the "vernacular humor in Loos's writing of Lorelei Lee transforms under the pressure of increasing focus in U.S. mass culture on the question of becoming cultured." (Tracy, 127) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes itself made fun of this urge to become cultivated and the fear of "cultural degeneration but also seemed to fuel it: Loos' novel became a bestseller, […], while other […] experimental and serious works struggled to gain a readership.” (Currell: 69) While this essay does not necessarily attribute higher cultural value to serious and "high brow" literature it is certainly true that the serialization of Loos's novel in the esteemed Bazaar magazine led to a debate on its literary and humorous value. Laurie J.C. Cella also examined the humor in Lorelei's grammatical mistakes and the novel's satire, yet she interprets them in a radically different way to Tracy. For Cella Lorelei's "grammatical error[s] [are] a purposeful misnomer that elicits more than just another dumb blonde joke." (48) Furthermore, she sees more than just "unintentional comedy" (Cella: 48). For her, Loos uses this particular style in order "to put her readers in a position of false superiority comparable to Lorelei's hapless suitors." (Cella: 48) This strengthens the theory that Lorelei is actually subverting established patriarchal systems. This argument is also discussed by Nancy A. Walker who seems certain of Lorelei's hidden intellect as she characterizes her as a "dumb blonde [...] who is not so dumb after all, but uses the assets she has to turn matters to her own advantage, all the while laughing at the men who perceive her as stupid." (11 - 12) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes did not establish the "dumb blonde" stereotype (Walker: 92) as an end in itself. Rather Lorelei's naive comments are used as a "vehicle for [...] Loos's social satire." (Walker: 93) Lorelei and Dorothy face both socioeconomic as well as cultural injustice because of their gender – they are exploited and marginalized by the patriarchal power around them. (Fraser: 16). Yet Lorelei is able to escape this exploitation by putting emphasis on the constructed, marginalized image of the "dumb blonde". Thereby she is able to turn the tables and exploit men such as Gus Eisman or Henry Spoffard. Although this can also be observed in the film, this subversion of patriarchal society and the subsequent redistribution of economical goods come to a halt when the film's Lorelei decides to marry Gus Esmond in order to enable a Hollywood happy ending.