Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady[a] (1925) is a comic novel written by American author Anita Loos.

"[1] Published the same year as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Carl Van Vechten's Firecrackers, the lighthearted work is one of several notable 1925 American novels focusing on the carefree hedonism of the Jazz Age.

Although dismissed by critics as "too light in texture to be very enduring,"[3] the book garnered the praise of many writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and H. G.

[4] Edith Wharton hailed Loos' satirical work as "the great American novel" as the character of Lorelei Lee embodied the avarice and self-indulgence that characterized 1920s America during the presidencies of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

[10] As Loos lugged her heavy suitcases from their overhead racks while nearby men failed to offer any assistance whatsoever, the young blonde dropped her book, and several male bystanders jumped to retrieve it.

[11] As an attractive young brunette, Loos observed this stark contrast in the men's behavior and surmised that the difference stemmed from the other woman being a blonde.

[11] During the train ride, Mencken, a close friend to whom Loos felt sexually attracted,[12] continued focusing his attention on the young blonde and behaving like a love-struck simpleton.

[14] A jealous Loos jotted down the short story in the persona of a young blonde flapper recounting her dalliances in an intimate diary.

[17] A kiss on the hand may make you feel very nice, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.Born in Arkansas,[b] a blonde flapper named Lorelei Lee meets Gus Eisman, a Chicago businessman whom she calls "Daddy."

[18] Meanwhile, Lorelei criticizes her friend Dorothy Shaw for wasting her time with a poor writer named Mencken,[c] the editor of a dull magazine,[d] instead of pursuing wealthy men.

[24] He puts Lorelei and Dorothy on the Orient Express where she encounters Henry Spoffard, a staunch Presbyterian, prohibitionist, and moral reformer who delights in censoring movies.

[6][33] Loos' work became the second-best selling title of 1926 in the United States and outsold F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Ezra Pound's The Cantos, and William Faulkner's Soldier's Pay.

[17] Reviewer Herman J. Mankiewicz, the future screenwriter of Citizen Kane, lauded Loos' book in The New York Times and described the novel as "a gorgeously smart and intelligent piece of work.

[37] Filled with congratulatory remarks, Faulkner lauded the brilliance of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and complimented Loos regarding the originality of her characters such as Dorothy Shaw.

White, Sherwood Anderson, William Empson, Rose Macauley, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, James Joyce, and Edith Wharton all praised Loos' novel.

[42] Wharton declared Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as "the great American novel," ostensibly because the character of Lorelei Lee embodied the avarice, frivolity, and immoderation that characterized 1920s America during Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge years.

[5] James Joyce stated that—even though his eyesight was failing him—he "reclined on a sofa reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for three days" while taking a break from writing Finnegans Wake.

[43] George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher, facetiously averred that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was "the best book on philosophy written by an American.

[5][45] The work's popularity crossed national borders into countries such as the Republic of China and the Soviet Union, and the book was translated into more than a dozen different languages and published in 85 editions.

[47] "When the book reached Russia," Loos recalled, "it was embraced by Soviet authorities as evidence of the exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the capitalistic system.

"[47] These reviews focused on the "rape of its heroine, an attempt by her to commit murder, the heroine being cast adrift in the gangster-infested New York of Prohibition days, her relentless pursuit by predatory males, her renunciation of the only man who ever stirred her inner soul as a woman, her nauseous connection with a male who is repulsive to her physically, mentally and emotionally and her final engulfment in the grim monotony of suburban Philadelphia.

[48] Following the widespread success of the book, Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld contacted Loos and suggested that he adapt the story as a glamorous musical.

"[51] "Tossing her golden curls, blinking her eyes and twirling her waist-length string of pearls", Walker's version of Lorelei embodied the flapper of the Roaring Twenties.

[49] Under that contract, Loos and her husband Emerson wrote the screenplay and had "to prepare the final scenario, select the cast, and have a hand in supervising the production," as well as write the inter-titles.

[63] By 1929, Loos' gold-digger epic had been adapted for a variety of different mediums: "It had been done in book form and serialized in magazines and syndicated in newspapers and designed into dress material and printed into wall paper and made into a comic strip and had even had a song by Irving Berlin.

The musical adaptation was produced by Herman Levin and Oliver Smith, whom Loos met while sailing on a steamship to the United States from Europe.

[49] The 1949 musical edition starred Carol Channing as Lorelei Lee and Yvonne Adair as Dorothy Shaw, and ran for 740 performances on Broadway.