Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady (Unabridged)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady (1925) is a comic novel written by American author Anita Loos. The story follows the dalliances of a young blonde gold-digger named Lorelei Lee "in the bathtub-gin era of American history." Published the same year as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Carl Van Vechten's Firecrackers, the work is one of several famous 1925 American novels which focus upon the insouciant hedonism of the Jazz Age.

Plot summary
A kiss on the hand may make you feel very nice, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
-_Lorelei Lee, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Born in Arkansas,[b] a blonde flapper named Lorelei Lee meets Gus Eisman, a Chicago businessman whom she calls "Daddy." He installs her in a New York City apartment and spends a small fortune "educating" her. He pays for jewelry from Cartier, dinners at the Ritz, and tickets to the Ziegfeld Follies. During this time, she meets a married novelist named Gerry Lamson, who frowns upon her liaison with Eisman. Lamson wishes to "save" her from Eisman and asks her to marry him. Not wishing to forgo an upcoming trip to Europe paid for by Eisman, Lorelei spurns Lamson. Meanwhile, she is dismayed that her friend Dorothy Shaw wastes her time with a poor editor named Mencken,[c] who writes for a dull magazine,[d] when she could be spending time with wealthier men.

Lorelei and Dorothy sail for Europe on the RMS Majestic.[e] Lorelei learns that Bartlett, a former district attorney who is now a U.S. Senator, is aboard the ship. She tells a sympathetic Englishman about how she met Bartlett. She recounts a dubious backstory in which a lawyer employed her as a stenographer, and she shot him to defend her virtue. During the trial, which Bartlett prosecuted, Lorelei gave such "compelling" testimony that the all-male jury acquitted her. The skeptical judge bought her a ticket to Hollywood so that she could use her acting talents to become a star. Due to her siren-like personality, the judge nicknamed her "Lorelei".[f] Conspiring with the Englishman, Lorelei exacts revenge on Bartlett by seducing him and revealing private information about his senatorial activities.

Dorothy and Lorelei arrive in England where they are unimpressed with the Tower of London as it is smaller than "the Hickox building in Little Rock." They are invited to a soirée where English aristocrats are selling counterfeit jewels to naive tourists. Lorelei encounters an elderly matron who is selling a diamond tiara. Lorelei casts her eye around the room for a wealthy man to buy it for her and settles on Sir Francis Beekman, whom she calls "Piggie." With flattery and the promise of discretion due to his matrimonial status, she persuades him to buy the tiara.