Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

As the brunettes that gentlemen prefer to marry Jane Russell and Jeanne Crain at least got a working vacation in Paris. The cinematography of the city of lights is dazzling..

A rather thin plot with many flashback sequences and one dream sequence are packed into Gentlemen Marry Brunettes. Jane and Jeanne play themselves a pair of sister showgirls who are tired of the New York scene and go to Paris hoping to strike it big as their motherand aunt did back in the Roaring 20s.

One remnant of the 20s is in Paris. Rudy Vallee is there and he remembers the old sister act well. With his patronage and a rich secret admirer the new sister act hits it big.

They even pick up a couple of earnest courters, Scott Brady and Alan Young. t all ain't quite enough.

A bit more of a coherent story and Gentlemen Marry Brunettes would have been a classic.

In this sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Jane Russell maintains first billing and takes Jeanne Craine as her sidekick. As the title song tells you, men may go crazy for blondes, but they marry brunettes. Needless to say, Marilyn Monroe is not in this movie.

As is the case with most sequels, this isn't nearly as good as its predecessor. The songs are okay, instead of adorable and catchy, and Jeanne Craine is no Marilyn. I sat through it, because the original is one of my favorite old movies and I wanted to give the sequel a chance. However, if you're looking for a better "sequel" to the 1953 classic, try The French Line. Jane Russell plays a girl from Texas-instead of Arkansas-who goes on an ocean liner to France and tries to dodge smooth players while singing about it. Sounds like a sequel, doesn't it?

"Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" is sometimes regarded as a sequel to "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" from two years before, but introduced a completely new set of characters. I have never read either of the Anita Loos novels on which the two films are based, but understand that her "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" was indeed a true sequel to its predecessor in that it follows the further adventures of Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw. Neither of these characters appear in the film. The only things the two films share are a broadly similar plot and the presence of Jane Russell as one of the leads.

As in the earlier film, Russell plays an American showgirl, here named Bonnie Jones who performs as part of a double act with her sister Connie. The two sisters decide that their careers on Broadway are going nowhere and that they should try their luck in Paris. Once in the French capital they achieve greater success and fall in love with two young men. And that, more or less, is the plot, although there are also flashbacks featuring another pair of Jones sisters, Mimi and Mitzi (the mother and aunt of Bonnie and Connie) who were the toast of Paris in the twenties.

As in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" the emphasis is very much on the female stars; the two male leads, Alan Young and Scott Brady, are even more bland and anonymous than their opposite numbers in the first film. Russell's co-star in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was, of course, the blonde Marilyn Monroe, and an important part of the storyline of that film was that their two characters had not only contrasting looks but also contrasting personalities. Monroe's Lorelei was a quite unashamed gold-digger and Russell's Dorothy, despite a string of cynical wisecracks, was the idealistic "good girl".

Here, Russell is teamed with another brunette, Jeanne Crain. The visual contrast from the earlier film is lost as the two women were similar in looks, although Crain was slightly shorter and less voluptuous. There is an attempt to give their characters different personalities, Bonnie being more flighty and impulsive and Connie more level-headed, but these differences are never brought out well either by the script or by the acting. Russell is not as good here as she was in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"; Dorothy seems to have been a character much more suited to her style of acting than is Bonnie. Perhaps, also, after "Blondes" and "The French Line", she was getting fed up with being typecast in scantily-clad showgirl-type roles. As for Crain, she is, quite frankly, a poor substitute for Marilyn.

The film contains some famous songs, although many of these such as "My Funny Valentine" and "Ain't Misbehavin'" have been appropriated (some would say misappropriated) from other contexts. The latter song here suffers from being performed in the context of a bizarre sketch in which Russell and Crain are chased by spear-wielding African cannibal tribesmen and end up in an enormous cooking-pot, a sequence which today seems almost hilariously politically incorrect. Even in the fifties it probably seemed rather off-colour to anyone more sensitive than the average Hollywood film-maker; political correctness is not always a bad thing. The Mimi/Mitzi scenes also get a bit annoying. There is a running joke that the older Jones sisters achieved their immense success despite a total lack of talent, and this is the sort of running joke that quickly outstays its welcome.

As a musical, "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" contains some attractive music, but its mediocre acting, unmemorable dialogue and virtually non-existent plot means that, as a film, it is in nothing like the same class as its more illustrious predecessor. 5/10, mostly for the music.

Have you ever seen such an awful movie that despite how bad it is it's still very entertaining? Well, welcome to the world of Anita Loo's and find out why Gentlemen may Prefer Blondes, but they don't neccessarily Marry Brunettes.

Here we have Jane Russell giving a very bad imitation of Marilyn Monroe with Jeanne Crain doing a very bad imitation of Jane Russell whose singing is dubbed by Anita Ellis who had dubbed Vera Ellen in the movie "Three Little Words". Then we've got Rudy Vallee who looks like he's a zombie on his last leg, ready for the grave, but still trying to sing "Have You Met Miss Jones" and a very bad, but hilarious rendition of, "I Wanna Be Loved By You" with Jane and Jeanne impersonating brainless idiot chorus girls, singing in high-pitched brainless notes through their noses, and on the soundtrack album it states that the singing for this particular number is sung by Miss Crain herself, and if I had been Miss Crain I, in no way, would have admitted to it by allowing that to appear on the album, but she's justified by a wonderful rendition, even though dubbed by Anita Ellis, of "My Funny Valentine"! Then you've got "You're Driving Me Crazy" which is fun, especially when the girls are expected to lift their fans at the end of the number saying, "I Couldn't Care Less!", and appear nude in front of the audiance, and Alan Young is booing them with the rest of the audiance, and Jane Russell later defends their actions by saying that they thought the French had a sense of humor!

Then you've got Scott Brady who didn't do his own singing [Robert Farnon the director of the orchestra did the dubbing for Brady], but Alan Young did do his own singing, but I really have to admit that even though the final number in the film has to be the worse musical number ever filmed for a movie, I really enjoyed it! Well, it WAS different! Here's Jane and Jeanne dressed up like birds of paradise standing in a pot ready to be cooked for dinner by the restless hungry natives in Africa and Alan Young is up in a tree dressed up like an Ape, and he, the girls, and the natives are all singing Ain't Misbehaving which makes about as much sense as an adajio dancer trying to dance on a hot rock, but pulling this whole ridiculous number together with the singing which isn't really that bad even though the natives sound like their singing Tarzan's favorite line OOM-GOW-WHAH during the chorus - dumb as it was - I LIKED IT, especially when Jane Russell does her sultry sexy rendition of Ain't Misbehaving like only she can do with the natives in the background still sounding like their singing OOM-GOW-WHAH!

But, the ending is priceless with Scott Brady starting out saying:

SCOTT: Bonnie! Will you marry me? JANE: [Imitating Marilyn Monroe] No! SCOTT: Bonnie! Do you really mean that? JANE: [Imitating Jane Russell] No!

Then she breaks into song singing some of "I Got Five Dollars" and when she gets to "Everything" Scott Brady asks, "Everything?" and she answers "Everything" and while they kiss, Jane Russell appears aboard as her older gray haired, wrinkled up, Aunt or Mother or whoever she is, and she sees what's happening, and she says, in her crackly old-age voice, to the Captain of the ship:

WHERE'S THE BAR!

And that's exactly how you feel when the movie is ending:

WHERE'S THE BAR!

Make mine a double vodka on the rocks with a twist of lemon, thank you very much so that I can justify, with what's left of my mind after viewing this two-hour fiasco, why I found this very bad, awful, musical so entertaining!

Give this movie a break! It's a spoof of the 50's musicals that were practically unspoofable in the first place. Enormously over-the- top it's nonetheless a great deal of fun; loud, brashy, colorful and vulgar. Travilla's costumes should give you a clue that it wasn't to be taken seriously. Monroe's principal costumer, he purposely spoofed himself with this picture. Relax and enjoy. Enjoy Paris in 1955 and delectable Jane and Jeanne in their final days as major movie stars.

Jane would disappear after 57's Fuzzy Pink Nightgown while Jeanne wasn't far behind in The Joker Is Wild. After that is was A.C. Lyles westerns and TV.