Sugar Kane's Ukulele

Sugar Kane's Ukulele is the defining prop of Marilyn Monroe's musical performance as Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot: a tiny, blond instrument through which the character's flirtatious stage identity is made visible and audible. Its apparent playfulness sharpens the contrast between the film's comic spectacle and Monroe's difficult effort to inhabit a role designed for an audience's pleasure. When applause follows her first performance, she asks to do it again; the repeated take becomes both a refinement of the character and a measure of the pressure placed on the actress beneath it.

The Instrument and Its Role

The ukulele belongs to Sugar Kane's screen identity as the blond singer and player with Sweet Sue’s Society Syncopaters. The novel presents it as a skill Monroe has been taught: during the performance, her fingers move with surprising dexterity even as she is described as drugged and frightened. That contrast matters. The music can appear light and effortless to the audience, while the player's visible competence is being achieved under strain.

The instrument is notably small, almost toy-sized. In the scene's imagery it becomes an emblem of a toy-like life and a toy-like blond soul, binding the prop to the constructed delicacy of Sugar Kane's persona. The ukulele is not merely incidental equipment held during a song: its scale and color echo the film's stylized image of the blonde performer, while its notes make that image something Monroe must reproduce in real time.

Performance and Repetition

The song sequence centers on Sugar Kane's desire to be loved by one person alone. As she strums, smiles, and looks toward the audience, the performance presents her as inviting affection; the passage also makes clear that this invitation is part of a familiar pattern in which she is adored for her appearance and sexualized screen persona. Her fingers' nimbleness and the song's comic charm therefore coexist with a more troubling question: what does the audience's delight mean when the woman performing is struggling to keep going?

A spontaneous round of applause greets Monroe on her first full day back at work after illness and time at home. The director starts it, and the others follow, eager to please the star. Monroe keeps her eyes lowered and bites her lip as she tries to judge whether the applause is sincere or merely an agreed performance of approval. She quietly asks to do the number again. That request makes the ukulele an instrument of repetition as well as music: the scene is not complete when the room applauds, because Monroe still wants another attempt.

On the next take, the ukulele's comic lightness is set against the deliberately exaggerated construction of Sugar Kane. The camera looks at the character as a voyeur, and the joke depends on her being naïve about how ridiculous the audience is meant to find her. The passage questions the terms of that laughter, including the film's use of gender disguise and the expectation that Sugar Kane's innocence will itself be funny. The ukulele helps stage that performance, but it also exposes how completely the character has been arranged for viewers.

A Prop Under Pressure

The applause does not resolve the tension around the performance. After an unwanted interruption, the next take goes badly: Monroe forgets the words and plays the wrong notes. The ukulele, previously a sign of apparent musical ease, registers the break between the finished screen image and the labor required to sustain it. The failure is specific to the performance, not a change in the instrument's role: the small prop remains in her hands, but the scene no longer proceeds according to the comic rhythm expected of Sugar Kane.

Monroe's distress escalates; she cries, strikes her thighs, and begins pulling at her carefully styled hair. The tight Sugar Kane costume allows her to rest only while standing, further enclosing the performer inside the role's appearance. The director intervenes, and Doc Fell arrives with a nurse to take her to her dressing room. The novel does not identify the substance administered there. In this sequence, the ukulele's importance lies in the contrast it has carried from the beginning: a toy-like object associated with a buoyant number is present during a performance that becomes unmanageable.

Meaning in the Novel

Sugar Kane's Ukulele condenses the division between Monroe and the character written for her. Sugar Kane is described as a comic, sexy cartoon, and the role's characterization wounds Monroe even as it is made for her. The instrument gives that role a concrete, repeatable action—strumming through a song—while the narrative follows the anxiety and effort beneath the repeated gesture. What looks like spontaneous charm on screen is shown as work whose success depends on the actress's ability to continue performing.

The scene also places public adoration beside private distress. The cast's applause and the audience's love for Sugar Kane do not erase the passage's references to Monroe's pain, losses, and troubled state; instead, they intensify its question about why a suffering performer can remain so beloved as a screen image. The ukulele thus carries more than the melody: it marks the point where comic entertainment, the marketable blonde persona, and the actress's demand to be valued for her work meet. Its smallness is part of the effect, making the prop seem innocuous even as the repeated performance reveals the pressure concentrated around it.