Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend

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"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" is a song introduced by Carol Channing in the original Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), which was written by Jule Styne (who also wrote the scores for such famed Broadway musicals as Funny Girl and Gypsy) and Leo Robin. It was based on a novel by Anita Loos.

1 Marilyn Monroe version
2 Moulin Rouge! version
3 Other versions
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Marilyn Monroe version

Monroe sings the song surrounded by well-dressed men.

The song is perhaps most famously performed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Monroe's character, Lorelei Lee, has been followed on a Transatlantic ocean liner by a detective hired by her fiance's father, who wants assurance that she is not a gold-digger. 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. Her fiance arrives at the cabaret to see her perform this song, about gold-digging. Diamonds are an element in another story line in the movie, in which Lorelei is given a diamond tiara by the mine owner, in gratitude for her recovering the photographs. In a later scene, Jane Russell, who played opposite Monroe, sang "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in court, while pretending to be Lorelei.

The song was listed as the 12th most important movie song of all time by the American Film Institute.^[1]

Monroe's rendition of the song has been considered an iconic performance and since been copied by other entertainers ranging from Madonna and Kylie Minogue to Anna Nicole Smith. Madonna's video "Material Girl" uses a similar set and costumes for the singer and her male dancers.

[edit] Moulin Rouge! version

The song is also featured in the 2001 film Moulin Rouge!, in which it is sung principally by Nicole Kidman in the role of Satine, the (fictional) star performer of the famous Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris, at the turn of the 20th century. This film version is technically a musical adaptation that director Baz Luhrmann titled "Sparkling Diamonds." Although it consists almost entirely of an adaptation "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," this version differs from the lyrics in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in several ways. For example, it does not include the name Harry Winston in the chant of famous jewelers; rather, Moulin Rouge founder Charles Zidler's name was changed to Harry in the movie, so his name replaces Winston's in the song. Black Starr & Frost-Gorham was known by that name only after 1925, but instead of using their 1875-1925 name of "Black Starr & Frost," their name was replaced in the Luhrmann film by nonsense words (understood by many listeners as "Ross Cole"). And the potentially anachronistic line "help you at the Automat" was altered in the Luhrmann film to "help you feed your pussycat." Additionally, a lyrical snippet from Madonna's song "Material Girl" was worked into this adaptation of the song.

[edit] Other versions

Emmylou Harris' 1983 country/rock version.
T-Bone Burnett's rock version of the song is both campy and cynical, while capturing the essence of the lyric.
At the end of 2007 Beyoncé Knowles did an updated version for Giorgio Armani's new fragrance Emporio Armani Diamonds in an ad directed by Jake Nava and titled "Can You Resist ?".
Wendi Peters performed a version for BBC Children in Need on 16th November 2007, adding "I am a Material Girl" half-way through, then returning back to the normal song.
Nicole Scherzinger performed "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" on the CBS special, Movies Rock, which paid tribute to the strong relationship between movies and music.
Deanna & The Downbeats, a cabaret-jazz quintet from Portland Oregon, performs a traditional version of the song that segues into a lounge-swing version of Madonna's "Material Girl."