Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" is a jazz song introduced by Carol Channing in the original Broadway production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1949), which was written by Jule Styne and Leo Robin. It was based on a novel by Anita Loos. The song is perhaps most famously performed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". Monroe's character, Lorelei Lee, has been followed on a Transatlantic ocean liner by a detective hired by her fiancé's father, who wants assurance that she is not marrying purely for money. He is informed of
Anita Loos ""Blondes"" would see three more printings sell through by year's end, and 20 in its first decade. The little book would see 85 editions in the years to come and eventually be translated into 14 languages, including Chinese. When asked who the models for her characters, Loos would almost always say they were composites of various people, but when pressed, admitted that toothless flirt Sir Francis Beekman was modeled after writer Joseph Hergesheimer and producer Jesse L. Lasky. Dorothy Shaw was modeled after herself and Constance Talmadge, and Lorelei herself most closely resembled acquisitive Ziegfeld showgirl, Lillian Lorraine, who was