page_title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel)
section_title: Reception and reviews
hierarchical_section_title: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel) / Reception and reviews
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenwriter Anita Loos on page 36 of the April / May 1920 Motion Picture Magazine.
context_page_description: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady is a comic novel written by American author Anita Loos. The story primarily follows the escapades and dalliances of a young blonde flapper in New York City and Europe during the Roaring Twenties. It is one of several novels published that year and exploring the hedonistic Jazz Age that have become famous—including F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Carl Van Vechten's Firecrackers.
  Loos was inspired to write the novel by an incident aboard a train bound for Hollywood: "I was allowed to lug heavy suitcases from their racks while men sat about and failed to note my efforts," she recalled, and yet, when another young woman "happened to drop the novel she was reading, several men jumped to retrieve it." Loos surmised this difference in men's behavior was because she was a brunette and the other woman was a blonde. When drafting the novel, Loos drew upon memories of jealously observing "witless" blondes such as Ziegfeld Follies showgirls turn intellectual H.L. Mencken into a love-struck simpleton.
context_section_description: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady was an instant success the moment it hit bookstores, selling out of all copies the day it was released. A second edition of sixty thousand copies was likewise soon sold. Afterward, the novel sold on average 1,000 copies per day. Its popularity crossed national borders into countries such as the Republic of China and the Soviet Union, and the book was translated into more than a dozen different languages and published in 85 editions.
  According to Loos, socialist journalists in foreign countries mistakenly interpreted the work to be an anti-capitalist polemic. "When the book reached Russia," Loos recalled, "it was embraced by Soviet authorities as evidence of the exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the capitalistic system. The Russians, with their native love of grief, stripped Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of all its fun and the plot which they uncovered was dire." Their reviews focused upon "the early rape of its heroine, an attempt by her to commit murder, the heroine being cast adrift in the gangster-infested New York of Prohibition days, her relentless pursuit by predatory males, her renunciation of the only man who ever stirred her inner soul as a woman, her nauseous connection with a male who is repulsive to her physically, mentally and emotionally and her final engulfment in the grim monotony of suburban Philadelphia." Loos denied any such political intentions in the work and was amused by such morose interpretations.
  Though the general public's appreciation of the story made Loos' satirical novel a success, it received numerous credible reviews and endorsements by renowned authors that secured the novel's reputation. Author William Faulkner wrote a personal letter to Anita Loos after reading her novel. Filled with congratulatory remarks, Faulkner affirmed the brilliance of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and complimented Loos regarding the originality of certain characters such as Dorothy Shaw. Aldous Huxley, author of the dystopian novel Brave New World, also wrote a letter of praise to Loos. He expressed his desire to meet her because he was so "enraptured by the book" and "sincerely admired" her work.
  Among the list of names of other great authors from the time period, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.B. White, Sherwood Anderson, William Empson, Rose Macauley, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, George Santayana, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Arnold Bennett, and H.G. Wells also praised Loos for her work. Wharton declared Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as "the great American novel," because the character of Lorelei Lee embodied the avarice, frivolity, and immoderation that characterized 1920s America. Writer James Joyce stated that—even though his eyesight was failing him—he "reclined on a sofa reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for three days" while taking a break from writing Finnegans Wake.
  George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher and author, facetiously averred that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was "the best book on philosophy written by an American." Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz gave Loos' book a rave review in The New York Times and summarized the novel as "a gorgeously smart and intelligent piece of work." Arnold Bennett and H.G. Wells took Loos out to dinner when she visited London as a reward for her excellent work. Even the Prince of Wales was reported to have been so amused by the novel that he purchased many copies of the book and gave them to his companions.
caption: Anita Loos, author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
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