Tibbits Professional Summer Theatre 2009

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES

I was amazed to learn that the Tibbits has never produced this show. It, of course, is based on the Anita Loos novella of the same name. Written in 1925, it has never gone out of print. It has been the basis of a Broadway play, a silent movie, a Broadway musical and finally a big screen Hollywood version of the musical (Well, sort of. More on that later.)

It is all about a comic gold-digger's trip to Paris where she exercises her potent claim "that diamonds are a girl's best friend." There are countless P.G. Wodehouse-type characters who provide her with the aforesaid diamonds. Loos was supposedly inspired to write the book after watching a sexy blonde turn American journalist and essayist H.L Mencken into a lovestruck schoolboy. Mencken, a close friend, actually enjoyed the work and saw to it that it was published. >Originally published as a magazine series, it was published as a book in 1925 and became a runaway best seller earning the praise of no less than author Edith Wharton who dubbed it "The great American novel."


The novella was adapted into a three act play called (surprise) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Loos and her husband, John Emerson. It opened in September of 1926 and ran for 199 performances--a very respectable run for a show in the 1920's. It featured Frank Morgan (immortalized years later as the Wizard of Oz) as Henry Spofford.



Loos spearheaded the musical adaptation in the 1940's with Broadway playwright, Joseph Fields. It was the second musical for the great composer, Jule Styne. Lyrics were handled by Leo Robin, who wrote with great comic flair. Carol Channing starred. It roared into the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 8, 1949 and stayed there for almost two years, racking up 740 performances.


Hollywood, of course, took notice. Twentieth Century-Fox bought it for Marilyn Monroe. (Don't you always think of Carol Channing and Marlyn Monroe in the same breath? (I believe I did. Once. When I had a fever of 104......) They took the surefire property--and threw out all but two songs. Updated to the 1950's, retaining only the basic story, it is still a fun film if only to see Jack Cole's musical numbers.

Lorelei Lee still had one more incarnation on Broadway. In the 1970's, instead of doing a revival, they rewrote the book, so Carol Channing could still be in it---telling the story in flash back and now called Lorelei. A couple of interesting songs were written by Styne with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, but it proved a very troubled undertaking. It has a small footnote in Broadway history for being one of the few shows to have two cast albums....one recorded before the break in tour...and then another after it, since it had changed so much...

I think it's a great old fashioned musical, a true musical COMEDY--and what a great way to start off the summer season. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes opens June 25 and plays through July 3.