Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell meet Howard Hawks!
The next movie screening is director Howard Hawk’s 1953 “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” a movie full of surprises, on May 24 at 7 p.m. at the Easton Public Library. It’s a fitting conclusion to our current series of great film comedies, as it exemplifies again that great movies offer more than meets the eye.
Hawks was an Academy Award winning director who churned out successful film after film starting in the ’20s, without being taken too seriously. That changed after World War II when the French film critics at Cinema Cahiers took notice, breaking his works into two distinct categories: adventures and comedies, each with their own highly personal style and viewpoint.
Though Charles Lederer was credited with writing the screenplay, Howard Hawks was the uncredited co-author and the undisputed auteur who shaped Anita Loos’s best-selling novel and hit Broadway musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” into the very personal film it is, reflecting Hawks’ comic vision, with typical social roles skewed and reversed.
The film’s knockout blonde-brunette stars Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell bonded on the set. No doubt their close relationship helped fuel the on-screen energy they exude playing best friends.
Come and see for yourself Wednesday night May 24 at 7 p.m. at the Easton Library, as beautiful brunette Jane decrees that she doesn’t care about money and is only interested in what she calls “love,” but may well be something else; and “dumb blonde” Marilyn … well, you really have to see it to believe it!
It’s Hollywood’s first female “buddy movie,” filled with colorful song and dance, plenty of laughs and much more than meets the eye.
