The SFFaudio Podcast #829 – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, read by Jenn Broda for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (3 hours 31 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Jonathan got to go first, 1925 book, epistolary novel, letters, a diary, The Illuminating Diary Of A Professional Lady, great narrator, great book, Jonathan will love this book, how can I count the ways, a movie adaptation, second to last musical sequence, Marilyn Monroe sings about diamonds, got lazy, cut the opening to it, make the case, the book is pretty great, the movie is very dangerous and has caused a lot of problems, how meanspirited the book is, a scathing social satire, very mean, mean to the reader too, ridicules these values, the movie is extoling those values, what the target of the book’s satire is, a speech at the end of the movie, daddy in law, being rich is just like being pretty, super evil, very compellingly put together, Howard Hawks, his most evil creation, a really good propagandist, the cult of Marilyn Monroe in L.A. today, their model is her in this movie, make you watch this movie, understand and miss, pretending to be dumb to get ahead, in the film, she’s pretending to be lazy to get ahead too, that’s what women like, they don’t have to do anything to get ahead, be sexpots, become lazy to emulate Marilyn Monroe, to sing like that, to talk like that, the product of hard work and dedication to her craft, effortlessly, a very dangerous film, luckily not a girl, problems it engenders, Jane Russell is good too, blown off the screen, Dorothy is a fun character, her diary, she’s the one who gets it, quite different, set 20 (or more) years apart, given even billing, in the book everything revolves around the plans of Lorelei, she’s a murderer, fucking genius, really smart, reading subversively, she has another layer on, if you look at the way she constructs sentences, baby sentences written by a baby: “A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and a paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book.”, he’s tired of her, or she’s so smart, this almost made me smile, a wole row of encyclopediacs, the spelling throuought, she’s a “Christian Science”, how stupid is she?, money, language, geograohy, she gets everything she wants all the time, she always comes out on top, stupidly uneducated, the books stacked up around her apartment, a woman intelligence about how men work, a very strange phenomenon, not a blonde, a screenwriter, a movie actress, men lose their fucking minds over women, all the men are married in the book, a little bored, an opporutnity to cheat on their wives, she knows what’s going on, how smart she is is very well hidden, underestimate how stupid she is, looking at the results, what’s so great about this character, seeing the world, we like her, a curse on Marilyn Monroe, the character is a parody of a real kind of person, lady looking for sugardaddies, before she takes her trip, Helen Of Troy, of Greek extraction, Mr. Popadopolis, a shopper, and he even speaks Greek to waiters, very hard to tell, intuition, doesn’t think things ahead very well, she makes plans, they always fail, the way the society she wins is constructed, shot him through the lungs, they want her to do well, they are invested in her, except for Dorothy and Lulu, the Jewish one who is educating her, hard to understand, movie Emmanuelle (1974), books by Joseph Conrad, every part of this book is spectacular, the layers of sickness/awesomeness, as a book it is a very good thing, the film takes it at face value and does that twist at the end, a limited perspective, her vision of the world is very small and narrow, a teeny piece of this bigger world, because it is a movie, the fly on the wall perspective, when looking at the movie, we see the glamorous Marilyn, actual life, small town, her looks propelled her, a tragedy, a box she’s put herself into, abuse by being so beautiful, another paragraph, March 19,

So the reason I thought I would take luncheon at the Ritz was because Mr. Chaplin is at the Ritz and I always like to renew old acquaintances, because I met Mr. Chaplin once when we were both working on the same lot in Hollywood and I am sure he would remember me. Gentlemen always seem to remember blondes. I mean the only career I would like to be besides an authoress is a cinema star and I was doing quite well in the cinema when Mr. Eisman made me give it all up. Because of course when a gentleman takes such a friendly interest in educating a girl as Mr. Eisman does, you like to show that you appreciate it, and he is against a girl being in the cinema because his mother is authrodox.

she doesn’t know what these words are, writing them down verbatim, falling in love, share these diaries with him, I would never put that in my diary, stuff being hidden from us, he wants to keep her as a pet, he’s busy, he wants her to “educate herself”, control her loose morals, giving him sex, she’s not a prostitute, a kept woman, literary men around, real people, inviting other women, bring their own alcohol, getting the chandelier fixed, the setting is Prohibition, she allows alcohol, the bootlegger, how wonderful she is, she supplied alcohol, supplies other attractive women too, almost wholesome, a layer of conniving gold digging, we like her so much, in the bad books of Dorothy, so well written, at your wedding I had to read about the Armenian genocide in order to not laugh, plying the mother in law, got her so drunk she wheeled her away, she drunkens men on her beauty and flirtatiousness, she drunkens women on alcohol, what people do, a hunter, animalistic, very natural, what religion she is, into health, you’ve had champagne, I partied too hard, the best way to read this, Anita Loos is making fun of a character that’s she’s created or met, Marilyn Monroe precursors, Mae West, plays a smarter woman, her whole shtick, the insidious part, quite depressed this morning, decided not to read the book, a cup by Cellini, a famous dish, Sam, a professor, life of Mr. Cellini, finds it boring, quite amusing in spots, riskay, not so close together, for the spots I am looking for, amusing also spelled wrong, Lord Jim, improve my mind, nearly made a mistake, The Nigger Of The Narcissus, negro instead of nigger, they have their feelings just the same as we have, this kind of mentality, she gets older, I’m not racist, get my servant to do the work for me, can’t we just, powerful people today, euphemism treadmilled, stuck with that, indians, especially in academia, politics, the white man’s language, BIPOC, long story short, it’s funny here, horror in real life, the problem with the movie, dance numbers and visuals, based on a musical play, removed more times than that, very separated, the tiara bit, done differently, the movie is very well done, young Mr. Spofford, little kid actor, if he was just a little bit older, 10 or something, under the surface it could be considered menacing or threatening, too propagandistly successful, subversive too, mocking, the reader, agrees that those are horrible things, most people think those things are good, confuse you, subversive in opposite ways, opposite points of views, diversions, a book of [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, a fun entertainment, they enjoy the book, out to dinner, an open friendly way, just too much the character, an iconic way of being, embodying a certain kind of womanhood, I have to be this, a fantasy for men, a fantasy for women, she’s very expensive, you need to buy her diamonds, the character of Lorelei vs. the public character of Marilyn Monroe, type defining, watching Elvis in a movie, he’s always Elvis, Some Like It Hot (1959), The Seven Year Itch (1955), more surreal than interesting, Just Imagine (1930), Futurama, XYZBrenda, just a musical set in the future, skype phones, flying cars, our vision of the Jetsons in black and white and a musical, an excuse, they don’t ever die, on the wane, rock operas, on rollerskates, Xanadu (1980), The Producers (1967), Busby Berkeley musicals, she goes to the Follies, cabaret dancers, partners, kept women, “a professional lady”, what does she do to earn her crust of bread, jewels, not exactly a prostitute, formal transaction, venmo or whatever, an old book for women, Sex And The Single Girl, a niggling feeling, her pimp, introduces her to people, a pimp will also have sex with his hookers, likes being cucked?, making the whole button factory up, a hobby, everything must be read subversively, through her pen, how does she pay Lulu, a budget, whenever he’s in town, an excuse to him, educating this girl, open a button factory, holidays on the saint days, relatives that are starving, really fat, ruining his business, palm her off on another man, in a lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed, the care and feeding of this pet, we’re doing all this work to figure out what actually happened, aspiring actresses in L.A., Amazon wishlists, meet guys on Facebook, she sells it on ebay, a fiction they create together, the streaming service for sex?, OnlyFans, I can’t beleive how great your camera setup is, what’s a twitch, she’s OnlyFansing, private dances, private shows, she’s doing it in person, a Patreon to support her acting career, a scary new AI thing, virtual girlfriend, a Jeff Bezos style character raking in the cash from virtual gifts, an escort, hired to be a date, nice to be on the arm of a beautiful woman, the Girlfriend Experience, different price points, taking her shopping, “falling in love”, made more plain in the film, easier to love him when he has money, evil insidious, a counter to the other narrative that’s also in the air, the story by O. Henry, two young people deeply in love, The Gift Of The Magi, anti-material stuff, the reality is women want a certain amount of security, burdened with a baby at some point, on the verge of marriage, a double marriage, a fanfare and a tiara, she doesn’t think you should like the guy you are dating, causes problems with your business, upset with herself, the problem is he’s married, a meal at a very homey placed, a big potato and a steak, they go in a hansom cab around the park, I’d like to divorce my wife but I can’t, I really don’t like this, that’s bad for her business, The Ritz, only staying at this one hotel chain, Anita Loos is hilarious, every place you go to has a McDonalds, cruise ships, the supposed destination, a stroll through the marketplace, meal on the ship, only one little store, the shopping in Paris, the Tower of London is terrible, the central of Europe, the men sit there and drink beer, parallel with that, Vienna opera, underneath the dust is tripe, a beerhall, she’s cracking a hardboiled egg, the whole place smells like sausages, everybody in England is a rich person trying to sell things, a portrait by Whistler, the number of allusions per page, Mr Chaplin, when she was in the movies, a scenario writer, drawn from life, hyperbolized, Pennsylvania, the naughty parts of the movies, to protect the morals of the poor people, just the naughty bits, without the good bits, parallels, the whole message, stringcheese commercials, the best part of the pizza without the pizza, the best part of the movie without the movie, pornographic movies had plots, scenarios, batwoman fucking some other batgirl, the extent of the script, all the celebrities going to Deep Throat (1972) in a New York premiere, quite a film, Sorceress (1983), boobs!, silly plot, a goat guy, like Pan, goat sounds come out, do you want to take a swim?, what’s that thing between his legs?, is it a weapon?, good quality on YouTube, whenever possible they take their shirts off, a naked person in a Hollywood theatrical film, Oppenheimer (2023)’s sex scene, Return To Nuke Em High Part 2 (2017), prudence, sex and nudity, current Game Of Thrones, so much nudity in it, do we even get a nipple?, an official censoring, Marvel movies are supposedly for a general audience, older people, Marvel movie fans, not even swearing, has to do with class, lower class people it is dangerous, they might get the idea of breeding, classicism, foreign distribution, self-censorship for China, art films, all connected, outsources everything, Howard Hawks is pretty terrific, an effective movie, insubstantial, presenting us with a Marilyn Monroe that damages the 20th century and beyond, subtext, after reading the book, these things are in it, a weird role model for women, a weird sex symbol for men, the reasons why, Dorothy comes across very slightly, pawn off her man on someone else, tell him how much money I’m spending on these jewels, making up the stories, throw the jewels into the East River, she’s the one who exemplifies the alternative, the deeper voice, smokes cigarettes, she’s after the whole Olympic team, diving into the pool, an actual folly that happened, the opposite of Marilyn Monroe’s one at a time thing, an even more substantial role to play, she’s in a wig, the little beauty mark is in the original book, her beauty mark moves around, added to give that weight, Marilyn Monroe has been typecast as this silly girl, Jane Russell’s role, people do comment, she’s better, she’s more dynamic, she acts like Marilyn Monroe in the film, a doubletake, the same blonde hair, the face is slightly different, a sequel book, But They Marry Brunettes, a third book?, Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen, the interview abruptly ended, a very heterosexual world, the sister-in-law who wears a tie and spends all her time with horses, WWI, she never went back to the mean line, he had to marry her because she was a suffragette, these Hollywood movies, made by homosexual men, homo eroticism, one tiny white girl surrounded by 8 black men, gangbang, muscular men, chorus dancing, Marilyn surrounded by guys holding hearts, fake grey hair, indistinguishable, men are all chasing her, she’s chasing all the men, the men are interested in each other and lifting weights and looking at their muscles, as a woman she probably doesn’t have as much experience with this stuff, only 3.5 hours, [Jenn Broda] narrated it perfectly, the Central of Europe, a really great job with it, that’s not her name, mentioned at the trial, a literary character, a lady who sat on a rock, a German siren, a place on the Rhine, she’s like a mermaid, German operas, seduced the navigators, she’s using a fake name, they don’t use their real names, Norma Jean, very realistic even though it is a farce, she’s in New York and England but she comes from L.A., probably set in 1925, screenwriter, a job for women, the man is the director the woman is the writer, the scripts can be revised all the way to the end, what characters were saying, how comics were put together, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, revising what was said right up to the end, how Curb Your Enthusiasm was produced, nobody has dialogue written, you’re angry about me having borrowed your car and I have this hat, she doesn’t have good plans, the sequence in England, both on the con, they have different problems, all the rich people are poor, also true, stereotypes that are very funny, she’s completely fake, is she even a blonde?, a really good book, when it came out on LibriVox, this is awesome, take the whole text, wordcounter.net, throw your text in there, if we threw this text into that, it is written in a style where she repeats words and over and over again, half the sentence start with “so”, no matter who they are, Mr. Ginsberg, some relation to the King, Mountbatten, Mr. Mountginz, his face became so read it was almost a picture, Major Falcon, written as if her grade level is really really low, super compelling, imitating the writing of the dumb blonde girl thinks she’s smart, really good, very solid, not everybody can appreciate this subtlety, ask Cora at another date, upcoming book, Dan Fante, the son of the famous novelist John Fante, similar to his father’s books, a very underground literary star, an anti-literary style, gritty books, dirty, street books, 86’d, struggling telemarketing, a chauffeur’s job, thribing limo service, he must remain sober, his own madness, familiar demons, a story from Saturn, March 1958, pretty connected, Never Marry A Venerian by Charles L. Fontenay, this charming young lady, he knew more about Venus, he was brilliant and understanding, the party tonight, a faint reproach, Hal is a robot, on Venus robots have equal writes to humans, built on Luna, plug him in every night to recharge his generators, colorful sand hills, most women are all body and no brains, your face and body are perfect, she asked him to marry her, not just a strong handsome body, his muscles were like iron, most brilliant and talented, tearful objections, Rico was from Earth, don’t you know, went off like clockwork, real terrestrial rice, Toby was tired, they retired to the bridal suite, how many brides she wondered, I don’t really know the man I’ve married at all, Toby had removed his shirt, the plug end of an electric cable, she saw the socket between her shoulder blades, how early could you see this coming?, right away, clued in, hints here and there, a little surprise ending, a nice compliment to the book, a rich girl looking for a beautiful husband while on vacation, tiny joke stories, O. Henry, twist ending, an O. Henry twist, at least 2000 words, for Weird Tales, long stories, novelettes, novellas, serials, short stories, always a need for to fill 3 pages, poems, a fixed length every month, this kind of story is good, crackerjack, WWI fighter pilot comes back home traumatized from the war, can’t sleep, like The Yellow Wallpaper but with a dude, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, people now are really trained just for plot, in the olden days, a series of song and dance routines, the comedic bit, romance bits, lovey dovey things, audiences are so trained, the attention span for the version with the songs cut out, everybody requires training, easier for kids, the amount of detail, the number of clothing items, less intricate, Quincy, M.D., Yes, Minister, a dog that likes to eat treats, at age 7, in order to grok it, required training, making things too easy, Scooby Doo, a 5 college consortium in Massachusetts, not a conspiracy theory, Shaggy is the stoner, based on Hampshire College, Smith and Mount Holyoke College, short dumpy fat lesbian, the tall skinny one, Velma, the jock school, Fred, the preppy guy, the dog is the jock, Amhurst is preppy, upscale and preppy, Daphne, University Of Massachusetts is the jock one, based on the personality of one of the schools, 2 girls and 2 boys and dog, the fat woman, the skinny woman, the thing that ties him all together, east coast, a New England state, tiki adventures, Providence, who’s theory is this?, keeping in mind that artificial intelligence is not accurate, reliable or trustworthy, cute, Golan Globus Theatre podcast, Scarab (1983), Robert Ginty, uncharismatic movie star, The Exterminator (1980), there’s no part one, the bad guy is Rip Torn, some sort of chemist professor, he’s decided to become Nyarlathotep, South America or Spain, improvising all his scenes, whenever he’s on screen, strange movements, Egyptian staff, boobs are shown, women behind him showing their boobs, unpredictable and strange, the anti-hero is the hero, rooting for Ginty to die, the description on YouTube, direct to video, a former Nazi seeking to gain new power attempts to resurrect an Egyptian god, Weird Tales style stories, a Weird Tales style plot, playing for weird, definitively a bad movie, I’m watching for these scenes, on screen antics, blackmail materials?, pictures of you with Anita Loos, it is stunning he has a movie career, attractive to women, you can get trained up to be able to appreciate crappy, the plot is less important than those scenes, a fake Mentos commercial, he spits venom, really good sound effects, dissatisfied with Midnight Pulp, curate your own shit, their programmer left, their programming hasn’t been the same, reward yourself, The Barbarians (1987), they show up on VHS and then they’re gone after 5 years, a new heydey for old stuff, giant books of movie reviews, as thick as your hand, stop at the video stores and buy whatever was in the bin with a good review, those were the days, a lady in New Orleans who’s opened up a VHS store, hobby/lifestyle, video stores are our versions of the pulps stands, a comic book store or the video store, pulp covers on the VHS tapes, waiting online at the grocery store, right by the checkout, Analog, F&SF, and crossword puzzles, discovered Heinlein at the museum shop, Rocket Ship Galileo, messed up, editorial director, hire this other editor, two editors, dissonance, Barnes & Noble, thoroughly decimated, Hudson News, bus stops and airports, the price is insane, you can still get these things if you travel fare enough, it used to be in every small town, a lot of this is technology, real estate stuff, a precipitous drop off after certain period of time, out of the land owning business, a similar one happened during COVID, Diamond Comic Distributors, three baskets, anti-ebook talk, the distribution method for ebooks, Amazon’s paid advertising, pay to play, how much the author/publisher is willing to pay, they’re squeezing, the way information and knowledge is distributed right now, the solution is to make it profitable, or make it less profitable, that’s how we got here, make it subversively searchable, individual education vs. advertising, some are available for free, showing movies every week, a sale, $30 for the year, ongoing, different price points, getting on the system, once you’re tied into stuff you become a manager, banking, all the boring parts, reading stories, watching movies, Tubi movies, Plex, sign in for that, finding the time for anything, Netflix, the new Black Mirror, The Boys, bad writing, wait fifty years, 99 years so old, so topical, fun to read, perpetual smile, almost the entire listen, easier to block ads, subtle, did this mean that?, just phenomenal, so many references, Anita Loos read that [Benvenuto] Cellini book, a real person, alluded to, Sam something, sounds like a real Hollywood person, Midnight Vampire, Will just had trouble with the subtlety of this book, how could you put that in your book, not successfully modeled Will’s mind, chemist/cultist Rip Torn, a book written by a dumb bitch, you really have not modeled his mind, Will is a very soft touch, more of a fantasy, we’ll have to ask him next show, A Witch Shall Be Born, The Aeneid, a holiday weekend, Scott booked these, its good, the timing, a good one, a good show, a great book, sometimes good books make good shows, suggest a book, the books you don’t like, if there is a disagreement, things were learned, we agreed pretty much about everything, what did I learn about Treasure Island with Alex last week, The Green Queen was a better show, a broken book with better ideas, women point of view, drugs and consumerism, that was as good as some of Philip K. Dick’s novels, he’s got some good novels too, the ideas were good in it, very obvious ideas, they were not original ideas, done poorly, she couldn’t decide, exaggerate these things, just describe them, about advertising, about Madison Ave., what the metaphor was, not a good novel, the veridical mask, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, they spark some shit up, a fun book and a funny book, C.M. Kornbluth can hit knockouts, The Advent On Channel 12 by C.M. Kornbluth, money was tight in the land, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, Walt Disney creating Jesus Christ out of Mickey Mouse in 4 pages, he does not baby it for you, reading Connie Willis, oh god get on with the fucking plot, a little like Alfred Bester, all these bad ideas, the diamond industry, diamond retailers, so much money, tiaras and necklaces, the intention, feels like a movie from 30s, a throwback, Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961), get that ice, unless no dice, those louses go back to their spouses, if the tone were different, look at the rhymes, fun silly rhymes, so bright, her dress is so red, very cartoonish, the fantasy for men is having a lot of money to attract women, this a fantasy for married men, more a fantasy for women than for men, one of his least movies, Happy Birhday, Mr. President, that scene practically happens in the movie, she’s playing herself from that movie, Madonna’s video Material Girl, the same song, the same dance routine, a better singer, she’s playing Marilyn Monroe, it looks like her eyes are closed, weird daddy stuff, baby and daddy, so childish, in the book too, that’s why they’re called sugar daddies, the opening song, Little Rock, Dorothy understands what’s going on, she’s the stupid one, she also knows what she’s doing, she can use her one trick, she’s a bad person, lying to people all the time, she has no morals, she doesn’t understand, when the murder happens, she reveals the murder, admire Anita Loos, she has no morals, the fake one so she can keep milking money, you’re like a radio, she doesn’t get that joke, a monkey at a typewriter, it is magical, how the book came into existence, you’re quite a philosopher, it doesn’t go on for 30 hours, what a great book.

Posted by Jesse Willis