Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel) first film version, which is now lost, was released in 1928 and starred Ruth Taylor and Alice White. Better known is the 1953 film version of the musical, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. The novel's characters were licensed for use in a daily newspaper comic strip series that ran from April to September 1926. The comic strip was not an adaptation of the novel, but used the novel's characters in new gag situations. Although the writing was credited to Loos, it was presumably ghosted by the artists, Virginia Huget and Phil Cook. The original series was
Sex symbol screen lover Rudolph Valentino's death in 1926 caused mass hysteria among his female fans. In Hollywood, many film stars were seen as sex symbols, such as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable. The "bad boy" image of the 1950s was epitomized by sex symbols such as James Dean and Marlon Brando. In his Elvis Presley obituary, Lester Bangs credited him as "the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America," in the 1950s and 1960s, through his overtly suggestive dance moves. With regard to fiction, Rotten Tomatoes states that the 1930s cartoon character