Search for Beauty (1934)

Truly Dreadful Film

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

The difference between films from their start to the early '30s and the post-1934 era is astounding. In the '30s, you have femininely dressed women, single, dating, ogling men, and having sex. In the '40s, the clothes are stiff, tailored, the women are single and we're told they are unfulfilled and unhappy. Such was the code, which dictated morals to the movies and possibly to a lot of naive and unsophisticated people across the country. I know because my mother was one.This film is precode at its most outrageous. During the 1932 summer Olympics in LA, some con artists (James Gleason, Robert Armstrong, and Gertrude Michael), convince top athletes to endorse their health and fitness magazine. In order to find the best of the best, as a publicity stunt, they stage an international competition. They send one of the endorsing athletes, Don Jackson (Buster Crabbe) out to find the athletes and get their consent to be part of a magazine spread.While Don is conveniently out of the country, the cons publish the magazine they really intended to -- a tawdry cheesecake rag with lurid stories and plenty of sex.When one of the athletes, Barbara (Ida Lupino) finds out what they're up to, she summons Don. To appease him, a deal is made whereby Don is given a farm that he and Barbara can turn into a health farm.Well, the health farm as far as our erstwhile publishers are concerned is nothing more than a high-class bordello. This is a fast-moving, fun film with men showing their naked butts, and women drooling over mens' bodies, (with one set of binoculars focused on Crabbe's crotch) and plenty of suggestive clothing.Robert Armstrong and James Gleason are a couple of old pros and handle the dialogue well. Buster Crabbe was a gorgeous man, almost pretty, who was a two-time Olympic medalist in swimming, but he wasn't much of an actor. He played a lot of comic book heroes like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Captain Gallant, and did dozens of adventure films and westerns. This was an early American film for Ida Lupino, who plays a star swimmer. She still has her British accent and sports the style of the day, platinum blonde hair and penciled in eyebrows. She is barely recognizable but she does a fine job. The question is, was this film ahead of its time or was this the way things were? Well, my opinion is that this is the way things were in places like Hollywood and New York among the film and theater communities. I don't think the whole country was this way, nor do I think in the '40s the whole country was all THAT way. After all, men were going to war and might never see their girlfriends again. It was all somewhere in the middle, though the code would have had us believe differently.Fun, and really needs to be seen to be believed.

One of the Last Pre-Code Movies to Exploit Film Freedom with Cheesecake in the Busby Berkeley Fashion and Beefcake (rarely seen) with Verbal Gags and Innuendos. It is a Film Version of the Real Life Girlie Magazines that were Popular at the Time, some Using a Come On that it was All About Health and Fitness (wink wink).It is Full of Eye Candy for Both Sexes and is Really Nothing but an Excuse for Bawdy Pageantry. Unlike the Berkeley Movies that were Infinitely Better, this Uses the Male as well as the Female Form to get a 1930's Audience Aroused. Couples who went to the Theatre in 1934 to See this "Musical-Comedy" Spoof, Probably couldn't wait to Indulge in a bit of Post Movie Petting.Ida Lupino (a role against type) is Unrecognizable as a Platinum Blonde Eye Filler and Buster Crabbe at the Beginning of a Tarzan, Flash Gordon-Buck Rogers, Cowboy Career that would Span Decades and Give Him a Substantial Place in B-Movie and Television History is in this Bit of Fluff.Also On Hand is Robert Armstrong (a year after King Kong) and James Gleason. They are the Non-Pretty Actors here and Provide the Comedy Relief with Some Racy Dialog. Overall, if You are an Oggler of the Female or Male Physique, and Find this Type of Spicy Stuff Fun, Enjoy.

Not nearly as racy as many pre-codes this is an innocuous trifle starring a virtually unrecognizable Ida Lupino. New to Hollywood they were trying to make her over into an English Jean Harlow fortunately it didn't work and the ultra blonde thin eyebrowed look she is saddled with here disappeared within a short period. Still buried beneath all the gunk she gives a nicely flinty performance foreshadowing the tough broad persona to come. The same can not be said for Buster Crabbe, an extremely fit and handsome man but an actor of little ability. James Gleason is the only other actor to offer up any kind of distinctive work, he's not remarkable but does his standard hot tempered wiseguy part well. Ann Sheridan makes her screen debut here, unbilled and without lines, as the Texas winner of the Search for Beauty contest but unless you knew it was her the two tiny bits she is in sail right by. The story is paper thin and aside from a few references to drugs and a couple of bare male bottoms in a locker room scene nothing you wouldn't see after the code went into place. The big production number, to Sousa music yet, is a clunky mess designed solely to show off the fine physical attributes of the winners. As such it works but it is eye rollingly awful in every other way.

I can't believe I watched this all the way through. The things one does for Ida Lupino! I waited and waited for her to appear on screen and nothing happened, so I peered more closely and blow me down, there she was, I hadn't even recognised her. She was playing the character called Barbara Hilton and I had not even noticed. She had bleached platinum blonde hair, all curly, with her eyebrows shaved off and replaced by a single thin pencil stripe. She was babbling like an idiot. THIS WAS IDA LUPINO? Well, you can imagine things got even worse. The director appeared to be having fun staging a kind of gay fantasy of muscle men striding around in shorts with Nazi-style belts, flexing their muscles, looking fey, and posing as if for a gay mag. This is definitely one of the silliest films I have ever seen. It was somewhat alarming also to see all this parade of Aryan youth and athletics and fitness going on in America in 1934, as it was like a tepid foretaste of what Leni Riefenstahl was shortly to show us from Germany. This film contains real footage of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, only two years before Riefenstahl's 'Olympia' from Berlin. The heath and fitness movement is clearly based on Bernard MacFadden, who was well known as a guru of the movement in the 1930s in America. This film is so nonsensical that it belongs in Dustbin Number One. How on earth did Ida Lupino survive such nonsense and go on to become a genius? I guess we all did things when young which are embarrassing, whether it was simply having acne or playing Barbara Hilton. The male lead is Buster Crabbe, better known as cartoon heroes Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Tell me I imagined seeing this, and didn't waste all that time, please.