Jean Harlow lit the torch for the blonde bombshell persona in the 1930s, though it took another generation for the flame to really catch. Shar Daws includes Harlow in this superbly researched group portrait of famous blondes who helped make the 1950s in Britain and America, along with Ruth Ellis, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Diana Dors. All of them experienced success and tragedy, love and heartbreak, adoration and infamy, and Daws examines these exceptional women in the context of the era, the constrictions imposed on them, and the barriers they broke through.