GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES

US, 1955, 99 minutes, Colour.
Jane Russell, Jeanne Crain, Alan Young, Scott Brady, Rudy Vallee, Guy Middleton.
Directed by Richard Sale.

A minor sequel to Howard Hawks' successful version of Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. This film was co-written by Mary Loos and Richard Sale. Sale was responsible for some pleasant musicals in the fifties like A Ticket To Tomahawk, Meet Me After The Show.

The film is set in the fifties and takes up the story of the new generation chorus girls in Paris. This gives the opportunity for the leading ladies, Jane Russell and Jeanne Crain, to act as the contemporary characters as well as their mother and aunt. With the flashbacks there is an element of pleasing spoof and enjoyable parody. Twenties' songs like Ain't Misbehavin' and I Want To Be Loved By You are satirised by the actresses and by Rudy Vallee who plays himself and also sends himself up.

Jane Russell made many films like this in the fifties after her notorious debut in The Outlaw. She was the object of criticism by the American Legion of Decency, for example, in 1954 with pickets against her film The French Line. Much of the satirical dialogue in this present film seems aimed at the criticism of The French Line. (Jeanne Crain, a noted Catholic actress, is an interesting choice for Jane Russell's co-star in this film.) Alan Young is a pleasant hero - he made several films, Androcles And The Lion, Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick. However, he made his impact in television in such series as Mr Ed.

The film is in Cinemascope, has the colourful style of the fifties, has some lavish staging of songs - in a somewhat garish manner. The film also has the themes of Americans in Paris, the show must go on, hard luck stories and mysterious benefactors, romance and comedy.