Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

by Anita Loos, Ralph Barton (Illustrator), Regina Barreca (Introduction)

Overview

Lorelei Lee is just a little girl from Little Rock who takes the world by storm to teach its gentlemen that kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever." Anita Loos first published the diaries of the gold-digging blonde in the flapper days of 1925, forging a new archetype for the modern world. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes follows Lorelei and her best friend, Dorothy, from Hollywood to Manhattan to Paris and London, pursued by eager suitors all the while. In "the Central of Europe," with a new diamond tiara in her handbag, Lorelei meets a traveling American millionaire who just might be the one. She retires her diary, but not for long, because, as she writes in the opening pages of But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, "it is bright ideas that keep the home fires burning, and prevent a divorce from taking all of the bloom off Romance." Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and its brunette sequel are present here in one volume containing the original Ralph Barton illustrations and a penetrating introduction by feminist humor maven, Regina Barreca.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141180694
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/28/1998
Series:	Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Series
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	186,209
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anita Loos was born in California in 1888. She began writing movie scripts and supplied film scenarios for D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks. First published in 1925, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a best-seller in thirteen languages and was followed by its sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes. Anita Loos was the author of the novels A Mouse is Born and No Mother to Guide Her and two volumes of autobiography, A Girl Like I and Kiss Hollywood Good-by. She died in 1981.

Regina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. She is the editor of seven books, including The Penguin Book of Women's Humor, and the author of four others. She writes frequently for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Hartford Courant.

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