In the screwball comedies of the 1930s and early 1940s, romantic attachments between members of different social classes functioned as allegorical representations of the more general class dynamics of Depression-era America. Through the screwball film, the problems and tensions inherent in an unequal and divided society could be safely explored. In many cases, the fantasy of social reconciliation could be embodied in a romantic union that overcame class barriers and thus demonstrated their fundamental artificiality. Hollywood films of the 1950s and early 1960s, on the other hand, treated the cross-class fantasy quite differently, reflecting fundamental changes in the prevailing social ideology of postwar America. Postwar comedies from Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Jean Negulesco's How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) to Delbert Mann's That Touch of Mink (1962), for example, differ significantly from their Depression-era counterparts in their treatment of both class dynamics and gender relations. Unlike the 1930s screwball films, in which the man was as likely as the woman to occupy the socially subordinate role, postwar comedies tended to present only a one-dimensional vision: attractive women in search of rich husbands.

In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe plays Lorelei Lee, a blonde seductress on a mercenary quest for a millionaire. Monroe's performance as Lorelei makes the desire to marry wealth appear so naturalized as to require no concealment or apology.