Happy Tuesday! Many students went back to school today and are ready to begin a fabulous 2016-2017 school year! I started almost 4 weeks ago, so I feel like I’m in the full swing of things, but since it’s September, I thought it would be fun to revisit one of my favorite back to school films. Legally Blonde starring Reese Witherspoon is a classic back to school film, with Elle (Reese) getting accepted to law school (Harvard actually). The fashion and plot are adorable and it’s really fun. I’m sure you’ve seen it, so here’s some trivia and a few fashionable looks to inspire you to watch it again.
–A perfect score on the LSAT exam is 180 therefore Elle’s score of 179 puts her in the top 0.1%.
–As agreed in her contract, Reese Witherspoon kept all of her costumes after filming.
–To prepare for her role as Elle, Reese Witherspoon spent two weeks studying the behavior of sorority girls, as she did not wish to portray a stereotypical airhead sorority image. She states on the DVD commentary that they were all very kind and polite, and she enjoyed her time with them. She also observed women shopping from the café at Neiman Marcus, and attended law school for a day.
–The chihuahua who played Bruiser was named Moonie. He died on March 10, 2016 at age 18.
–Reese Witherspoon’s character wears 40 different hairstyles throughout the film.
–We see Elle Woods brushing her hair behind the opening credits. This is not Reese Witherspoon, as she was in England finishing The Importance of Being Earnest (2002).
–During the opening credits, a group of (mostly) guys is seen wrestling on a lawn in front of a fraternity house. These folks are actual Caltech students, and were a last-second addition to this scene: they showed up on the set (the row of fraternity and sorority houses featured are administrative buildings on the edge of Caltech’s campus) unannounced and were invited to join in the filming.
–Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Silverstone, Katherine Heigl, Christina Applegate, Milla Jovovich, and Jennifer Love Hewitt were all considered for Elle Woods.
–In the novel, Elle is a member of Delta Gamma, an international sorority which is part of the Panhellenic Conference. It was changed to Delta Nu to avoid problems with the real organization.
–Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair previously appeared together in Cruel Intentions (1999).
–Chloë Sevigny turned down the role of Vivian.
–Doubling as the Suffolk County Courthouse is Harvard University’s Sever Hall which is in the main yard and where Harvard Freshman go first when attending the University.
–Reese Witherspoons character Elle Woods is largely based on Reese’s character Evelyn Williams in American Psycho (2000).
–Elle Woods says she grew up in Bel Air across the street from Aaron Spelling, Tori Spelling was considered for the role of Elle.
–Neither the confrontation with Warner outside the courtroom nor the final graduation scene was a part of the original script. When the movie was tested, audiences were so wrapped up in Elle’s story they were disappointed that she never got her revenge on Warner, and they also wanted to know what happened to her in the end (did she become a lawyer after all?). The two scenes had to be shot in England, because Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Davis were both filming there (she was filming The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), while he was filming another project) at the time. Great Hall of Dulwich College in London played Harvard Law School. During the graduation scene, only Witherspoon and Davis are actually present. Shots of Jennifer Coolidge, Selma Blair, Luke Wilson and other supporting cast members were filmed in LA and the whole thing was edited together later. Both Witherspoon and Wilson are wearing wigs: she had cut her hair short since finishing filming and she is much paler than in court; he had shaved his head for The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and got a much deeper tan. However, since two years have elapsed in the film, this is acceptable.
Trivia courtesy of IMDB
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