Pamela Blair which later opened at the Kennedy Center to critical acclaim. She also appeared in "Sugar", the stage musical version of the film "Some Like It Hot", in which she played "Sugar Kane", a role made famous by Marilyn Monroe. In 1974, Blair was invited by Michael Bennett to participate in the workshops from which "A Chorus Line" was developed. The character of "Valerie Clark" was in large part, based on her own life, although the surgical enhancement came from another dancer. "Val was based on Mitzi Hamilton, who actually underwent surgery to enhance her figure, and Pam Blair, whose mixture
Marilyn Monroe twentieth-century gender tricksters." Monroe herself stated that she was influenced by West, learning "a few tricks from her – that impression of laughing at, or mocking, her own sexuality". In the 1950s, she also studied comedy in classes given by mime and dancer Lotte Goslar, famous for her comic stage performances, and had her accompany her on film sets to instruct her. In "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", one of the films in which she played an archetypal dumb blonde, Monroe had the sentence "I can be smart when it's important, but most men don't like it" added to her character's lines