Marilyn Monroe dress, which prompted veteran star Joan Crawford to describe her behavior as "unbecoming an actress and a lady" to the press. While "Niagara" made Monroe a sex symbol and established her "look", her second film of the year, the satirical musical comedy "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", established her screen persona as a "dumb blonde". Based on Anita Loos' bestselling novel and its Broadway version, the film focuses on two "gold-digging" showgirls, Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw, played by Monroe and Jane Russell. The role of Lorelei was originally intended for Betty Grable, who had been 20th Century-Fox's most popular "blonde bombshell"
Anita Loos Loos began to write a sketch of Mencken and his vacant lady friends that would later become "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" began as a series of short sketches published in "Harper's Bazaar", Known as the "Lorelei" stories, they were satires on the state of sexual relations that only vaguely alluded to sexual intimacy; the magazine's circulation quadrupled overnight. The heroine of the stories, Lorelei Lee, was a bold, ambitious flapper, who was much more concerned with collecting expensive baubles from her conquests than any marriage licenses, in addition to being a shrewd woman of loose morals and high