Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend

"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" is a jazz song introduced by Carol Channing in the original Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Leo Robin.

Monroe's character, Lorelei Lee, has been followed on a transatlantic ocean liner by a detective hired by her fiancé's father, who wants assurance that she is not marrying purely for money.

He is informed of compromising pictures taken with a British diamond mine owner and cancels her letter of credit before she arrives in France, requiring her to work in a nightclub to survive.

The American Film Institute,[1] TCM,[2] and a biography of director Howard Hawks[3] state the only help she had was for the brief high-pitched introduction to the song (usually not included in singles), which was sung by Gloria Wood.

Producer Darryl F. Zanuck told Daily Variety that it only took 3+1⁄2 hours to shoot the number in CinemaScope versus four days for the original film version.

[citation needed] The song was sampled by Megan Thee Stallion and Normani in 2020 for "Diamonds", with the music video featuring a set and costumes evoking Monroe's film performance.