Having recently starred as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood, Margot Robbie is no stranger to playing iconic blondes. Now, as she reprises her Harley Quinn role in Birds of Prey (2020), she has recreated Marilyn’s ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, albeit with a subversive twist.
“I love old films, but my heart breaks when I watch Marilyn Monroe’s,” Margot told Stylist magazine in 2018. “The characters she plays are so misogynistic and degrading that it’s mind-boggling that that was the norm. The same with Bonnie and Clyde; parts of it make my blood boil.”
Rappers Megan Thee Stallion & Normani collaborated on ‘Diamonds’ for the Birds of Prey soundtrack. They reworked lyrics from ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’. As Brooke Marine reports for W Magazine, this is the first time the song has been sampled – and we even hear Marilyn cooing ‘Tiffany … Cartier …’ at the fade-out.”
First posted here on January 11, 2020
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Costume designer Erin Benach explained to Insider how she revamped Marilyn’s pink strapless gown for Birds of Prey.
‘It wasn’t even really on the page or decided amongst us that it would be the same Marilyn outfit,’ said Benach. ‘There were talks of it being something totally different and new, like way more Harley.’
The idea to transform the iconic look and update it came to Benach while in a research library.
‘I remember the moment where I just went, “Oh my God, the best idea is just to take the exact Marilyn outfit and put her in pants. Turn it into pants,”‘ said Benach. ‘It was just a light bulb moment. It hit and I told [director] Cathy [Yan] and Cathy was like, “Brilliant. Done. Do it.”‘
First posted here on February 7, 2020
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Writing for Den of Geek, David Crow explored the parallels between Marilyn and Harley Quinn.
“Robbie’s Marilyn Monroe homage has been at the center of Warner Brothers’ Birds of Prey marketing, from trailers to official clips. After all, what else says this ain’t your typical superhero movie than a ‘50s inspired musical number? And while it’s only a brief sequence in the finished film, it’s also one of the movie’s best moments. Tied up at the nightclub owned by Roman Sionis, the villainous Black Mask (Ewan McGregor), Harley has been captured simply because he believes she’s more vulnerable after her breakup with the Joker…
But Harley is neither silly or in need of protection. She quickly realizes that Black Mask is after a MacGuffin of great importance—a diamond, in fact—and Harley will be just the gal to retrieve it for him. Because Harley is resourceful, Harley is smart … and Harley is also a wee bit nuts. Hence when Sionis smacks her in the face, Harley vanishes into a musical fantasy where she gets to go into full Marilyn mode, vamping in pink attire and bejewelled accessories while singing ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.’ McGregor even shows up in the fantasy to dance along before shooting up the scene much too quickly.
By itself the sequence is a brief dive into pop culture etymology. On this end, Robbie and Harley are emulating Marilyn Monroe’s most popular musical number; it also may be a nod to Madonna’s ‘Material Girl‘ music video (which likewise homages Monroe); and then there’s the way director Cathy Yan films McGregor interrupting the sequence by shooting up the stage like a more literal version of Fred Astaire’s dance-shooting in ‘Top Hat, White Tie and Tails’ from Top Hat (1935). Even McGregor’s inclusion is a knowing wink to one of this century’s musical masterpieces, Moulin Rouge!(2001), in which he plays a penniless writer astonished when Nicole Kidman also sings ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ oblivious to the materialism she is teasing.
But this is more than just an homage to a Marilyn Monroe scene or the abject cynicism of her song … In the original movie, the song is a third act statement of intent by Monroe’s character, Lorelei Lee. Lorelei is an unabashed gold digger whose entire plight stems from her romancing one rich married man while being engaged to another. When her schemes are discovered, she seemingly loses both, hence her big musical number about why diamonds are better than any transient romance.
Having a contentious relationship with studio head Daryl F. Zanuck, who disliked Monroe and her desire to be more than the dumb blonde gold digger in musical comedies, she was suspended in 1954 … She eventually made up with Fox, but she also started her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, for which she was ridiculed in the press and by her peers …
During this era, Monroe also struggled in her private life, including her marriage to Joe DiMaggio, the world famous baseball player who for a honeymoon took Monroe on a business trip to Japan … and then divorced her in a rage after she embarrassed him by posing for photographers over a Lexington Avenue subway grate during the filming of The Seven Year Itch (1955). Again the press took a disdainful sniff at the movie star who let the strong man get away—just as they sneered when she then married intellectual playwright Arthur Miller.
The story of Monroe’s fight for credibility, both in association with 20th Century Fox or with Joe DiMaggio, and away from these men, is the kind of real world struggle Birds of Prey strives to reflect, even in its gonzo funhouse mirror … Everyone, including other women, defines Harley by her relationships to men and view her to be, as one man says early in the film, ‘a dumb slut.’ These insults are hurled even though she has a PhD and, as she displays throughout the film, a rather quick witted intellect in which she can psychoanalyze her friends and foes alike.
In her lifetime, Monroe was likewise defined by the men in her life and what they could give her … Through it all, she struggled for legitimacy and respect as an actress when executives were content to just see her singing ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’: a male fantasy in which a beautiful woman purports the only thing she wants in this world are the presents powerful men can bestow on her.
Nevertheless, playing that game gave Monroe the tools to eventually make movies she was proud of, like Bus Stop, and to form her own production company—which was a crack in Fox’s power over her and another crack in the slowly crumbling Hollywood studio system …
That is exactly what Margot Robbie did after she realized the potential of the Harley Quinn character. Perfectly cast as the jester moll, Robbie’s Harley was the sole redeeming quality of Suicide Squad (2016), even as director David Ayer’s camera seemed to most value her for all the lingering shots of her skintight (or nonexistent) clothing. Nonetheless, Suicide Squad gave Robbie a lot more clout as a producer …
Robbie herself revealed last year that she actually loathes when journalists, usually men, describe her as a bombshell. ‘I hate that word,’ Robbie told Vogue in June. ‘I hate it — so much. I feel like a brat saying that because there are worse things, but I’m not a bombshell.’
One might suspect that in her time, Monroe thought similarly as Fox kept trying to cast her in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes type roles … But using the tools Monroe pioneered, Robbie is able to take preconceptions audiences might have for her, or for Harley Quinn after Suicide Squad, and blow them away.”
First posted here on February 11, 2020
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