Literature Quiz: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: 15 Questions | Authors

Answer: Anita Loos

Anita Loos, 1883-1981, was one of the first and the most influential of the flappers and sold over 100 scenarios to D. W. Griffith by the time she was 18. She went on to a distinguished career as playwright and screenwriter, biographer and novelist. Inspiration for 'Gentlemen' came from a cross-country train trip taken together with several studio executives and one blonde starlet.

The men spent the week fighting over the blonde's bags while Loos was left to lug her own. The problem, she decided, had to be hair colour.

Answer: It's unspecified

The book's subtitle is "The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady" which can be read in more than one way. And although Lorelei doesn't seem to have ever actually held a real job, that doesn't stop her from being a very, very busy person. The other main difference between the book Lorelei and her stage and screen personifications is that in the novel, finding a husband is not high on her list of priorities.

Answer: Carole Channing

'Gentlemen' made a star of Carole Channing, who would go on to a long and highly successful career. Jule Styne wrote the music, Leo Robin the lyrics and Anita Loos herself assisted in the script.

Answer: Jane Russell

Jane's big solo was 'Ain't anyone here for love?' and she was backed by the US olympic team for that one. 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes', directed by Howard Hawks, was one of three films of 1953 in which Marilyn Monroe was featured, making her a major star. The other two were 'How to Marry a Millionaire' and 'Niagara'.

Answer: He was running around with someone else

In the musical, Lorelei explains that she plugged him because he was after her virtue. In the book, her story is a little different. "So Mr. Jennings helped me quite a lot and I stayed in his office about a year when I found out that he was not the kind of a gentleman that a young girl is safe with. I mean one evening when I went to pay a call on him at his apartment, I found a girl there who really was famous all over Little Rock for not being nice. So when I found out that girls like that paid calls on Mr. Jennings I had quite a bad case of histerics and my mind was really a blank and when I came out of it, it seems that I had a revolver in my hand and it seems that the revolver had shot Mr. Jennings."

Answer: We don't know.

"So it was Judge Hibbard who really gave me my name because he did not like the name I had because he said a girl ought to have a name that ought to express her personality. So he said my name ought to be Lorelei, which is the name of a girl who became famous for sitting on a rock in Germany."

Answer: To get married

The generous and elderly Mr. Eisman of the novel is transformed in the film into the young, rich, respectable and incredibly nerdy Gus Esmond. She's supposed to be married to him in Paris if she behaves herself on the ship, hence the sea voyage.

Answer: He owns a diamond mine

Unfortunately, the long and wild story of the Sir Francis "Piggie" Beekman and the diamond tiara was gutted to fit the demands of the shorter and far more conservative film. As well, the film Lorelei resorts to measures the book Lorelei would consider 'not nice', including getting herself stuck in a porthole.

The book Lorelei was far more resourceful. In the novel she does briefly mention an encounter with an unnamed diamond dealer while on her way back to New York, but "...but we had quite a quarrel the night before we landed, so I did not even bother to look at him when I came down the gangplank, and I put the unset diamonds in my handbag so I did not have to declare them at the customs."

Answer: It's really nothing

For Lorelei, London is "really nothing". The tower is unimpressive and "the boat does not come clear up to London but it stops on the beach and you have to take a train". What's worse, "...it seems the gentlemen in London have quite a quaint custom of not giving a girl many presents. I mean the English girls really seem to be satisfied with a gold cigaret holder or what they call a 'bangle' which means a bracelet in English which is only gold and does not have any stones in it which American girls would really give to their maid."

Answer: All these things

Lorelei and Dorothy are awestruck by the Coty and Cartier shops and the Eyefull tower is a lot more impressive than the one in London. Best of all "...when a girl can sit in a delightful bar and have delicious champagne cocktails and look at all the important French people in Paris, I think it is devine. I mean when girl can sit there and look at the Dolly sisters and Pearl White and Maybelle Gilman Corey, and Mrs. Nash, it is beyond worlds. Because when girl looks at Mrs. Nash and realizes what Mrs. Nash has got out of gentlemen, it really makes a girl hold her breath."

Answer: Diamonds are a girl's best friend

"I mean a girl has to look out in Paris, or she would have such a good time in Paris that she would not get anywheres. So I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever." Immortalized on film by the luminous Marilyn Monroe.

Answer: The Central of Europe

They're on the 'oriental express' and Dorothy observes that "I think we girls have gone one step to far away from New York, because it begins to look to me as if the Central of Europe is no country for we girls." Some things haven't actually changed that much since the '20s in the Central of Europe.

Answer: A little boy

George 'Foghorn' Winslow played the little kid with that bizarre voice.

Answer: Yes

It was called 'Gentlemen Marry Brunettes'. Jane Russell returned as Dorothy in the film version of 1955.

Answer: All of them

Wharton referred to it as 'the great American novel'. As Lorelei concludes, "...after all, the greatest thing in life is to always be making everybody else happy." All the quotations in this quiz, by the way, were taken from the Leipzig: Tauschiz 1953 edition.