“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady By Anita Loos Intimately Illustrated by RALPH BARTON NEW YORK BONI & LIVERIGHT 1925 To JOHN EMERSON CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 11 II. Fate Keeps on Happening 39 III. London Is Really Nothing 63 IV. Paris Is Devine 93 V. The Central of Europe 131 VI. Brains Are Really Everything 175 GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES CHAPTER ONE GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES March 16th: A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and a paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book. This almost made me smile as what it would really make would be a whole row of encyclopediacs. I mean I seem to be thinking practically all of the time. I mean it is my favorite recreation and sometimes I sit for hours and do not seem to do anything else but think. So this gentleman said a girl with brains ought to do something else with them besides think. And he said he ought to know brains when he sees them, because he is in the senate and he spends quite a great deal of time in Washington, d. c., and when he comes into contract with brains he always notices it. So it might have all blown over but this morning he sent me a book. And so when my maid brought it to me, I said to her, “Well, Lulu, here is another book and we have not read half the ones we have got yet.” But when I opened it and saw that it was all a blank I remembered what my gentleman acquaintance said, and so then I realized that it was a diary. So here I am writing a book instead of reading one. But now it is the 16th of March and of course it is to late to begin with January, but it does not matter as my gentleman friend, Mr. Eisman, was in town practically all of January and February, and when he is in town one day seems to be practically the same as the next day.