Curiosidades

Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had originally assumed the need to dub the singing voices of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) until musical director Lionel Newman famously stitched together a vocal rendition of their opening number from multiple takes. As a back-up plan, an alternate set of recordings was made with Eileen Wilson dubbing Russell's voice, but in the end both ladies sang for themselves, and Russell even released an album of songs on the MGM label. From that point on, Jane Russell always sang in her own movies, including Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), and she would go on to a very successful run on Broadway as Elaine Stritch's replacement in the show "Company" in 1971.

Features the first film performance of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart song "My Funny Valentine." The song had been introduced in 1937 by Mitzi Green in the stage musical "Babes in Arms," and was originally slated to appear in both the MGM film version of that show and the 1948 Rodgers and Hart biopic Words and Music (1948), for which it was prerecorded by Betty Garrett. Following its appearance in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), the standard turned up two years later in the film version of Pal Joey (1957).

Ironically, the leading ladies' most enduring work is found in the all-too-brief flashback sequences, which provided the film with its few moments of brilliance. Jeanne Crain in particular unleashed a scathing comedic sense that appeared nowhere else in her film canon. Interestingly, though she was dubbed in all of her musical films, including this one, Crain's surprising ability to master the 'boop-boop-a-doop' caricature voice for her aunt's character resulted in her singing for herself in the "I Wanna Be Loved By You" sequence.

Though few would realize the fact today, Rudy Vallee was doing a hilarious send-up of his own image in both the modern-day and flashback sequences, as he had been one of the music industry's foremost sex symbols in the Roaring Twenties, billed as "The Vagabond Lover."

Jane Russell and Jeanne Crain's riotous antics as the Jones Sisters in the Roaring Twenties flashbacks were inspired by Rudy Vallee's lines of dialogue, representing the sister act as utterly hapless beyond their anatomical charms. He goes as far as to say that their only talent was for holding feathers in the right place, sometimes failing even at that. Using this as a springboard, Russell and Crain outdid themselves in embellishing the numbers that followed, from their just-left-of-center vocal renditions to their mechanical execution of the staging to their basic inability to maintain concentration on stage (at one point, Russell waves to an admirer in the audience and scratches herself beneath the ribs while waiting her turn to sing, capping this with a strained attempt to keep Crain from falling over backwards in a lean). Obviously, more fun was being had by brunettes when they wore blonde wigs, which led many to speculate why the script did not focus more on the Roaring Twenties sequences.