Gentlemen prefer blondes

Reveal the secret of why men choose... well, you know who! "Kissing her hand does a diva a lot of good, but a brilliant and sapphire bracelet is forever," muses Lorelei Lee, heroine of Anita Loos' legendary humorous book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which has entertained readers for a century. It is also sung by her movie character Marilyn Monroe in the ageless adaptation of the same name, who inadvertently earned the nickname "dumb blonde" with this role. A spacious lady from the American backwoods with the aim to get rich as much as possible takes advantage of wealthy and vain older gentlemen. She confronts her career as a gold-digger with the fate of her "unteachable" friend Dorothy, who prefers feelings to the pursuit of millionaires. The literary work was admired by the author's famous contemporaries Francis Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and William Faulkner. Through Lorelei's world view and immediate way of expressing herself, the author portrayed the carefree hedonism of the Jazz Age with its seduction, gangsterism and false courtliness. She deliberately chose colloquial language full of grammatical errors to emphasise the heroine's lack of education and naivety, which contrasts with her cunning and calculation. The actress Alena Vránová has taken an equally creative approach to the work, interpreting Lorelei's gems of thought and language with verve and humour. They wrote about the book "Loos manages to convey both sophistication and naiveté in one fantastic sentence." - The New Yorker "Like Moll Flanders or Becky Sharp, Lorelei is the product of an empty, money-obsessed society. Surrounded on all sides by gangsters and crooks, armed only with her looks and her ability to manipulate, she does what she must to find safe harbor. It's impossible not to cheer for her..." - The Times "Loos's book helped define the Jazz Age." - The Guardian