Before beloved modern classics such as Legally Blonde and Barbie, there was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire – two 1953 films that helped shape the blonde cinematic archetype, cementing Marilyn Monroe’s status as the most iconic blonde in Hollywood history.

In British Blonde, art historian Lynda Nead traces blondeness from religious hagiography to its appropriation by 20th-century consumer culture. Blondeness also came to symbolise whiteness and racial superiority, a racist ideal that gained traction in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, ads for blonde hair dye proliferated, using promises of glamour to lure consumers with the Hollywood allure of stars, including Monroe.

Golden age Hollywood had no shortage of iconic blondes prior to Marilyn Monroe. In the 1930s and 1940s, stars such as Jean Harlow, Veronica Lake and Rita Hayworth were celebrated for their beauty, talent and magnetic screen presence. Monroe also had notable contemporaries. In 1950s tabloids she was dubbed a core member of The Three Ms – a trio of blonde actresses that included herself, Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren.

What makes Monroe so special? She embodied what it meant to be desirable in the 1950s, according to film scholar Richard Dyer. It wasn’t just that Monroe was a beautiful blonde, but that her image as a movie star spoke to the particular ways that sexuality was thought of and felt in the period.

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