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 look up", she lamented, "but what a terrible let down it would be to find out that I was smarter than he was." The pictures for Famous Players-Lasky were not as successful as their previous films, partly because they starred Broadway headliners not adept at screen acting. In addition to their film "collaborations" the couple wrote two books: "Breaking Into the Movies", published in 1919, followed by "How to Write Photoplays" in 1921. Though the scripts carried both names, they were mostly products of Loos alone. Later Loos would claim that Emerson took all the money and most of the