American actress and singer Marilyn Monroe performed the song 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 fiancé's father, who wants assurance that she is not marrying purely for money. 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 fiancé arrives at the cabaret to see her perform this song, about exploiting men for riches. Diamonds are an element in another story line in the film, 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.
Most of the song in the film is Monroe's own voice and sources differ on how much help she had. The American Film Institute,[1]TCM,[2] and a biography of director Howard Hawks[3] state the only help she had was for the brief high-pitched introduction to the song (usually not included in singles), which was sung by Gloria Wood. However, a 2007 article in The New York Times recounting the career of famous ghost singerMarni Nixon claims Nixon dubbed the phrase "These rocks don't lose their shape."[4]George Chakiris can be spotted as a member of the admiring male chorus.
This frontispiece to the original Gentlemen Prefer Blondes novel was accompanied by the quote "Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever." -- a sentiment reflected in the start of the lyrics.
The number was later re-shot in CinemaScope, to be used as part of a CinemaScope demonstration held on the Fox lot in March 1953. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck told Daily Variety that it only took 3+1⁄2 hours to shoot the number in CinemaScope versus four days for the original film version. The public finally saw the CinemaScope version ten years later when it closed Fox's documentary tribute to Marilyn, but this has not been released on DVD or VHS.
The display of diamonds in Hollywood films and songs is one of the most successful cases of product placement in marketing history. The diamond company De Beers, who dominates the world market for diamonds, engaged advertising company N.W. Ayer in the 1930s and 1940s to make diamonds more popular. The advertising company came up with the idea of placing diamond jewelry on idols in popular movies. Diamonds were placed in several Hollywood films, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Diamonds Are Forever, and in songs such as "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend". This campaign made engagement rings with diamonds popular and made diamond sales rise dramatically.[9][10][11]
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 of "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 Harold in the film, so his name replaces Winston's in the song as "Harry Zidler". 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;" in the 2002 DVD release, the words printed in the text captioning are "Black Star, Roscor"). 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.
The 1986 Herb Albert single Diamonds, which feature Janet Jackson on lead vocals, contains the "Diamond's are a girl's best friend" refrain within the lyric.
Tina Martin & The Wild Side recorded a music video and 12" Vinyl for this song titled Diamonds in 1990 on The Wildside Label
Thalía performed this song in 1991, on Spanish television.
In the first episode of the 1995 British TV miniseries She's Out, the character Connie Stephens (Zoe Heyes) sings a part of the song and dances in the mirror to it. She bears a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe and also states that Monroe was an inspiration to her.
Kylie Minogue performed this song in 1995. She also performed the song in 1999, dressed as Marilyn Monroe for the opening of 20th Century Fox's Australian Studios. In 2007, she recorded another version for her film White Diamond.
Anna Nicole Smith recorded the song in 1998. The single went on to reach the top 100 dance singles in France.
Wendi Peters performed a version for BBCChildren in Need on November 16, 2007, adding, "I am a Material Girl" halfway through, then returning to the main song.
Nicole Scherzinger performed a version for the 2007 CBS special, Movies Rock, which paid tribute to the strong relationship between films and music.
In 2009, the song was parodied for an advert for ladies'-only car insurance brand Diamond.
T-Bone Burnett's rock version of the song is both campy and cynical, while capturing the essence of the lyric.
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".
In the cartoon Hey Arnold! an episode called "The Beeper Queen" where Helga's mother Miriam sang the parody, "Beepers Are a Girl's Best Friend", in a commercial for Big Bob's Beepers in the same manner as Marilyn Monroe's performance.
In the episode of Muppets Tonight, both Miss Piggy and Whoopi Goldberg backed up by penguins in a staging similar to the original film did the song as a closing number.
In the Müller Corner advert from 1997, famed British model, actress, author and activist Joanna Lumley briefly recreates a scene of the song (a.k.a. your "glitzy, glitzy extravagant side") although she does not sing at all during the "Candy Corner" segment of the ad.
In the music video for her single "Material Girl" (1985), Madonna emulates the scene in which Marilyn Monroe sang the song. She also included a snippet of the song during selected shows of her Rebel Heart Tour (2015–2016), following a cover of "La Vie en rose".
Christina Aguilera also did the song on her first featured film Burlesque (2010). Kristen Bell and Julianne Hough first lip-synched Marilyn's version, then Christina finished it with her own vocals. Later, in 2023, Aguilera sang "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" during her second concert residency — Christina Aguilera at Voltaire.
In 1993, famed British drag queen performer Lily Savage (played by Paul O'Grady) performs a parody of the song called[13]"Argos Is a Girl's Best Friend" in his stand-up comedy video Paying the Rent.
In 2016 pop singer Ariana Grande sang the song at a private party.[15]
In the 2016 episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend titled "All Signs Point To Josh...Or Is It Josh's Friend?", Rebecca Bunch (portrayed by Rachel Bloom) pays homage to the song in the music video The Math of Love Triangles. A reprised version of the song called The Math of Love Quadrangles appears in the episode titled "I Need to Find My Frenemy".
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