The moment Marilyn Monroe became an icon
Mention the word “icon”, and an image of Marilyn Monroe may pop into your head. The star died more than six decades ago but still plays an outsized role in pop culture. Even people who have never seen one of her films know the bleach-blonde hair, red lipstick, and beauty marks. Her image has been so commodified and emulated over the years that she has become more of an object than a person, no matter how many biographers try to reframe her story.
There are many iconic moments in Monroe’s career. Standing over the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to President John F Kennedy in a dress covered in rhinestones, and the many photos taken by Milton Greene are just a few of the images that are still ubiquitous. However, icon status has to start somewhere, and for Monroe, it happened in 1953.
Contrary to what you might assume from her stature in history, Monroe didn’t shoot to stardom overnight. She had to toil in the Hollywood trenches for years, taking bit parts until she finally gained prominence. For a while, she alternated between playing peripheral coquettes in light comedies like Let’s Make it Legal! and Monkey Business and femme fatales in film noirs like Don’t Bother to Knock and Niagara. When she finally got a lead role, however, she was ready, and she delivered a musical number that instantly made her an icon.
Based on a hit Broadway musical, Howard Hawks’ 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a razor-sharp satire about two showgirls who command the attention of men wherever they go. Jane Russell plays Dorothy Shaw, a dark-haired, voluptuous beauty who has a soft spot for good-looking men with no money. In contrast, her best friend, Lorelei Lee (Monroe), has eyes for nothing but diamonds and will charm any man to get them. While sailing across the Atlantic to Paris so that Lorelei can marry a wealthy tycoon away from his watchful father, they are trailed by a private investigator.
Russell was a bigger star than Monroe at the time the film was released, and she was given a meatier role. She is the de facto star of the film, with more musical numbers and a deeper story arc. But it’s Monroe who steals the movie. Playing the cliché of the “dumb blonde”, she established her own caricature in the film. Unfortunately, while Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a send-up of the stereotype that ultimately shows Lorelei to be both extremely intelligent and down to earth, Monroe’s later characters would be far less nuanced.
In one of the final musical numbers of the film, Monroe takes centre stage. Dressed in a figure-hugging, hot pink dress and matching elbow-length gloves, and set against a blood-red backdrop, she sings and shimmies her way through ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.’ The lyrics are full of wit, but Monroe’s playful, gutsy delivery carries the scene. This is made obvious by a later scene in which Russell sings the same song. Their different deliveries of the word “Tiffany’s” alone demonstrate just how fully Monroe owned the number.
Her performance of the song has been copied countless times over the years by everyone from Eartha Kitt to T-Bone Burnett, but no one has ever come close to eclipsing her version. It created the template for Monroe’s persona, which was both a boon and a deathknell for her career. She spent the rest of her life in a love-hate relationship with her public image, and never managed to break free of it. For better or for worse, she still hasn’t.
