page_title: Blonde versus brunette rivalry
section_title: Popular examples
hierarchical_section_title: Blonde versus brunette rivalry / In the media and entertainment industry / Popular examples
caption_attribution_description: English: Staged Hollywood protest march publicizing the 1953 movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"
context_page_description: The blonde versus brunette rivalry is rivalry—whether real, imagined, or fictional—between women with blond hair and those with brown hair. In popular culture and everyday conversation, the words blond and brunette are sometimes used as a nouns to refer to women by these two hair colors. This supposed rivalry is a common fictional theme in books, magazine articles, film, and television.
context_section_description: Three's Company, an ABC sitcom that ran from 1977-1984 also featured a blonde and brunette triangle.  The blonde, Chrissy Snow, was played by Suzanne Somers and the brunette, Janet Wood, was played by Joyce DeWitt.  The man in the middle, Jack Tripper, was played by John Ritter.  Somers and DeWitt were continually faced with media stories that described both an on and off-screen "rivalry" between the two co-stars. Both women repeatedly denied the stories and attempted to dispel "...the myth that women, especially blondes and brunettes, can’t get along in Hollywood."  This show was based on the British sitcom Man About the House, which likewise had brunette Paula Wilcox and blonde Sally Thomsett and Richard O'Sullivan as the man in the middle.
  A different perspective on the Hollywood blonde vs. brunette rivalry was offered up by the dark-haired Teri Hatcher in a 1994 interview while she was starring in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, "I love that there are no blondes on our show. You see so many shows with so many blondes, and isn't everyone
  sick of that?"
  
  At the same time ABC was running the Three's Company sitcom, it was also running Dynasty, a night time soap opera. The show starred John Forsythe as Blake Carrington, an oil tycoon embroiled in a love triangle that featured his blonde wife Krystle Carrington (Linda Evans) and his ex-wife, brunette Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins).  During the show's 10-year run the women had a number of fights.  The spectacle of two middle aged woman engaged in a catfight during prime time boosted the show's ratings considerably.  Feminist author and cultural critic Susan J. Douglas believed that the shows emphasis on the male lead character, highlighted by women fighting over him, confirmed the traditional patriarchal role of men in society.  Notwithstanding, Douglas and other feminists were not only huge fans of the show but were captivated by the sight of two women engaged in a catfight.  Douglas even suggested that in popular culture, the "purest" form of a catfight was between a blonde and a brunette.
  Dynasty upped the ante ... On one side was the blonde stay at home Krystal Carrington ... in the other corner was the most delicious bitch ever seen on television, the dark haired, scheming, career vixen, Alexis Carrington Colby ... Krystal just wanted to make her husband happy; Alexis wanted to control the world.  How could you not love a catfight between these two?
  During Dynasty's run, Collins co-hosted Blondes vs. Brunettes for ABC. The show featured a number of skits that gently poked fun at popular culture's blonde vs. brunette rivalry.  The final skit featured Collins and co-host Morgan Fairchild in their elderly years offering a toast to each other.
  Pitting blondes and brunettes against each other, especially as romantic rivals, is a Hollywood technique that extends back to at least the early 1930s.  In a 1932 interview with an Australian newspaper, Hollywood director Dorothy Arzner stated that lead women and women in supporting roles must always have different hair color to accentuate the contrasting beauty of each type.  Arzner also stated that blondes were usually cast as the fickle types while brunettes are cast as the more serious and emotional types. Using hair color in the casting process, has sometimes resulted in Hollywood altering versions of established characters found in other media forms. As an example, in the 1936 Flash Gordon serial, blonde Jean Rogers was cast as Dale Arden who had been portrayed as a brunette in the Flash Gordon comic strips.  However, since the producers had already cast brunette Priscilla Lawson as Dale Arden's nemesis, Princess Aura, the decision was made to cast a blonde in the role of Arden to help the audience differentiate between the two women.
  Arraying blondes against brunettes, is not unique to the American film industry.  The British film company Hammer Films produced a 1967 movie that took the blonde vs. brunette concept to an extreme. The film Slave Girls (also released under the title Prehistoric Women) star
caption: Staged Hollywood protest march advertising Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a 1953 movie
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