Search for Beauty (1934) User Reviews (25)

pre-code, and boy, is it!

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 22 June 2015]

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.

Nudie Revue

[evanston_dad · 6/10 · 17 December 2012]

Goofy film about two Olympic athletes (Ida Lupino and Buster Crabbe) who are hired to bring some respectability to a fitness magazine that is using sex as its major selling point.

People who want to see an example of some pre-Code raciness will find much to like about this movie. Its overt treatment of sex as something people actually like instead of something covert that must never be mentioned is by itself enough to make this movie stand apart from the more sanitized films of the succeeding decade. But beyond that, it revels in images of the barely dressed human body, male and female, and includes a shot of bare butts in a men's locker room, and a jaw dropper of a production number in which all of the women are wearing sheer athletic tops with their breasts and nipples clearly visible.

Funny enough, for all of its reputation now as being representative of a certain kind of moral looseness in early 30s films, the movie's attitude about sex is as pure as freshly fallen snow.

Grade: B

I found it!

[ptb-8 · 7/10 · 4 June 2010]

Well, what can I say other than YIPPEE! Slipped through just before the may 1934 deadline of the Hayes Code this is almost the superlative risqué extravaganza for sex and nudity in a 1930s movie. One astonishing scene in a mens locker room even has full male nudity! Unheard of outside Nazi beauty films of the later era and certainly an eye-full of sassy rudeness both in picture and dialog. Other posts here will tell you the story but since this film features two of the most beautiful actors ever on screen BUSTER CRABBE and IDA LUPINO (in blonde 'do) and then peppers the screen with gorgeous women and men parading and exercising and grabbing each other...! THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY is everything you might hope for in a pre-code sex comedy and wow does it deliver! Hilarious rude and deliciously nude rude and funny. And cheer breathtaking Toby Wing dancing on a table in a negligee!

Ida Lupino in her American Debut

[drednm · 29 April 2009]

Part of the recent Paramount box set of pre-Code films, this is a fascinating film that's about the sexiest film I can remember seeing. The whole film is about sex disguised as a health and exercise magazine that hucksters Robert Armstrong and Gertrude Michael put over by duping Olympic athletes Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino into lending their names to it.

Amazingly frank attitude toward sex actually shows several naked men (butts) in a locker room, women showing their crotches (in underwear and bathing suits), etc. Dozens of men and women run around in skimpy, tight bathing suits throughout the film, including a massive production number. There are many scenes of men ogling the scantily clad women, and a jaw-dropping scene where Gertrude Michael zeroes in with binoculars no less on Crabbe's crotch while he's competing in the Olympics.

Crabbe is surprisingly good here; 20-year-old Lupino, in her American film debut, is totally unrecognizable with curly blonde hair and Dietrich eyebrows. Armstrong and Michael (always underrated) are solid. We also get James Gleason, Toby Wing (in her best film role, dancing in skivvies on a tabletop), Bradley Page, Nora Cecil, Bert Roach, etc. Ann Sheridan and Lynn Bari are among the beauties, who include Gladys Willar from Worcester, Massachusetts.

There's a hilarious sequence where they decide to build the perfect woman for advertising (think *Page Miss Glory*) by gathering models who are famed for their specific parts.... one for lips, one for hair, etc... and then there's Fanny....

A Search For Beauty Before The Strangulating Restrictions Of The "Hays Code" Were Imposed

[StrictlyConfidential · 6/10 · 15 July 2020]

Featuring a literal army of good-looking, scantily-clad young men and women - 1934's "Search For Beauty" was produced during Hollywood's pre-Code period (1929-1934).

This was a unique era in American film-making when censorship barely existed and directors had free reign to make the movies they wanted (and the public demanded) where no subject was taboo, including adultery, murder, and yes, sex.

So, if you enjoy viewing lots of beefcake and/or cheesecake, then, believe me, "Search For Beauty" is a film highlighting a delicious array of eye-candy that is sure to whet anyone's whistle.

Entertaining pre-Code fare

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 15 February 2022]

This is not a particularly good film, but it's pretty entertaining, and I mean that in a bonkers kind of way, even by pre-Code standards. The premise is that a man fresh out of prison for his last scheme hatches a plan to run a fitness magazine ostensibly to promote health, but in reality to make money off of photos of beautiful young men and women, with some salacious stories mixed in. He and his female partner convince a publisher to front the money after they show him they've landed a couple of Olympians to work on the magazine, with the publisher's interest being further aroused by a blonde cousin who's along for the ride. The rub is that the Olympians are squeaky clean and truly want to promote exercise, and this central conflict proceeds from magazine to a 'fitness farm' that they begin to run.

Part of the fun of the film is the casting, as a young Ida Lupino plays one of the Olympians, and it's notable that she only turned 16 two days after it was released. Late in the film to protect her cousin (Toby Wing) from a lecherous crowd, she gets up on top of a table and shimmies around in her silky pajamas, which on its own is worth the price of admission. Buster Crabbe, fresh off his gold medal in the 1932 games, plays the other Olympian, and there are a large number of real-life beauty contest winners from various American states and the British Empire, including Ann Sheridan in her first screen appearance. The three people out for money over decency are played by Robert Armstrong, Gertrude Michael, and James Gleason, and the banter between them has good pep to it.

One of the most notable things about the raciness in the film is that the objectification is equal opportunity, and in fact there is probably more ogling of the male body here than the other way around. There are bare butt cheeks in a shower scene, and a woman training her binoculars on a swimmer's crotch and purring "ooh baby, you can come to mama!" There are countless scenes with muscular young men wearing nothing but shorts, and exchanges like this one from a group of women looking at photos of them:

"We're using those boys in an idea we're working on - outdoor sports with indoor trimmings." "As far as I'm concerned, outdoors, indoors, or behind doors." "Think your customers might give him a tumble?" "Tumble? If they were like me, they'd give him a double somersault." "Give me a look. Might turn a couple of handsprings myself." (studying pictures) "Mmm, haven't seen anything like that since...well, just call it since."

Somewhat out of left field, the film also includes an ensemble dance number with men and women in bathing suits prancing and jiggling about for five and half minutes near the end. The choreography is not up to the gold standard that is Busby Berkeley, but it's not bad, and definitely had me smiling. What a nutball of a movie this is, I was thinking while hoping no one would notice me watching this scene.

It's also interesting how the film kind of thumbs its nose at the morality police, those who would begin enforcing the Production Code in the middle of 1934, five months after this was released. For one thing, there's the cynical exchange between the women talking about the magazine story "I Loved an Artist," where one says that unhappy endings that serve as morality lessons are "baloney," and that in real life women probably get ahead in life for their dalliances. The protagonists in this story are Crabbe and Lupino's characters to be sure, but it's interesting that the fitness farm they run gets a bit fascist in how they crack down on partying and force guests to abide by their rigorous schedule. The ending, with the tight shot on the old publisher's butt as he's forced to touch his toes and the words "The End" scrolling onto the screen, one word per cheek, had me chuckling too. While low-brow, I liked the silliness and audacity in the face of the looming end to the pre-Code era.

Not so racy pre-code

[jjnxn-1 · 6/10 · 7 April 2012]

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.

Makes you feel guilty for just watching it

[1930s_Time_Machine · 1/10 · 6 January 2023]

I watched this thinking it might be one of those a silly, lightweight comedies from the early 30s. I did not expect anything as distasteful, dreadfully acted, poorly written, unevenly directed and so achingly unfunny when it's trying so desperately hard to be funny as this. It actually seemed promising at the beginning when shouty Robert Armstrong and Gertrude Michael (star of the equally awful MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS) meet up after release from prison but after about five minutes the wisecracks and come-backs are all exhausted. I am not surprised Ida Lupino was in disguise throughout, this would have been embarrassing had anyone back in England seen her in this. And as for the acting ability of Flash Gordon!

I also did not expect for anything counter possibly be so boring - not just boring but amazingly the boredom factor grew exponentially as it went on. I had to endure pain to force myself to get to the end just for this unique experience of ultimate tedium. It felt like the crew had all started walking off set about half way through and had just left the cameras rolling. Was this really made by Paramount, a professional film studio or has someone grafted their logo on to the start of this.

The plot has Robert Armstrong and Gertrude Michael setting up a "health" magazine essentially to turn it into a salacious type of magazine (photos of people in bathing costumes etc) and to give their rag an air of respectability they enlist a couple of high-profile athletes with high morals. The film then ping-pongs between scenes of people dressing in shower rooms and dressing rooms to scenes with the two athletes crusading against moral depravity, and pornography of the media......including films like this. It's a film which hates itself as much as the viewer does! One example of this is, depending on whether you're a teenage boy or not (or still think you are) is the best moment in the whole motion picture. Toby Wing (in a rare credited role, rather than being just an extra for a change), who was the prettiest, sweetest, cutest girl in the world (that's a fact, don't argue) is encouraged very easily by some drunk, older men at a party to strip down to her underwear and dance on a table. This clearly isn't just the best moment in this film but one of the greatest scenes in any motion picture ever, if not THE greatest. But what does the film then do - it becomes a moral crusade against any form of titillation, the two crusaders sweep in, rescue pretty miss Wing and physically throw those men out of the room for staring at the divine miss Wing....just like we've been doing. Is this film trying to make us feel guilty for actually looking at it? It has a very schizophrenic feel.

One reason films from before 1935 are fun is there's often a few scantily clad ladies. There are quite a lot of scantily clad ladies in this but (apart from Toby Wing of course) they all seem to be part of a cult as they all look identical and all in some strange uniform. Whatever the opposite of sexy is, these are that. There are probably more scantily clad men than women: bare-chested, blonde haired Aryan youth marching in their tight shorts. Eventually these hundreds of white men join up with their blonde female compatriots and parade in military formation, waving flags to military music. At least Leni Raiefenstahl was a professional film maker ! I couldn't decide whether the complete amateurishness of this or the fact that I was watching a dry run of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL was worse.

Eventually "those in control" catch up with Armstrong and Michael and their non-conformity is trampled under the iron boot of respectability. It is very possible that this is symbolic of the forthcoming implementation of Joseph Breen and the Catholic League of Decency's Motion Picture Production Code. It's also equally possible that this is just a terrible, terrible film - best just to rewind to Toby Wing dancing on the table.

Jaw-dropping, good-natured pre-code antics

[goblinhairedguy · 8/10 · 17 November 2005]

You really have to see this one to believe it! Not many movies flaunt their pre-code liberty so blatantly and lightheartedly (not unlike the Busby Berkeley extravaganza "Gold Diggers of 1933"). At the same time, it's very successful in its own right as a fast-paced comedy satirizing health-product hucksters and wealthy debauchees.

Inspired by the L.A. Olympics, a trio of con artists lure some prize-winning athletes into endorsing their newly-acquired fitness magazine. They stage an international publicity stunt to find the healthiest young bodies in the English-speaking world. While the athletes are out scouting for specimens, the three rogues turn the magazine into a lurid cheesecake rag (their lascivious board of censors is a hoot). This spins off into a health farm, which they try to turn into a high-priced knocking shop for Hollywood swells out to exploit eager young talent.

As the con artists, Robert Armstrong and James Gleason have plenty of fancy, word-mangling patter. And Gertrude Michael holds her own, needling them mercilessly, as well as slinkily seducing all-American hero Buster Crabbe. Crabbe practically plays himself, while an unrecognizable bleached-blonde Ida Lupino is his pert female British counterpart.

Not only are the dialog and situations pretty risqué, but there are plenty of suggestive visuals. Michaels enthusiastically ogles Crabbe's crotch through binoculars; there's a shower scene with bare-assed young men flitting about, and a production number which has the busty and muscled contest winners bouncing around in tight outfits, simulating Olympic events (male and female flesh are flaunted equally in this film). Berkeley favourite Toby Wing has a plumb role as Lupino's fun-loving underage cousin, who almost suffers a fate worse than death at the climactic wild party (not that the filmmakers seem to be too worried about it!). Lupino has to save her by taking her place in a grinding table-dance. Skinny Gleason, in jogging shorts, provides a very low-comedy fade-out gag.

Modern viewers will guffaw at the naive concept that health-conscious athletes would rather stop an orgy than join in. And like most 1930s Paramount films, the set direction is marvellous (just check out Armstrong's dowdy office!).

Even if you can only find a jittery video transfer, it's well worth checking this one out. More Paramount Olympic satire can be found in "Million Dollar Legs" (1932 version), and the magazine-exploitation angle was revived for the Don Knotts extravaganza "The Love God?".

Cheesecake Beefcake...Spicy Dialog

[LeonLouisRicci · 7/10 · 8 September 2014]

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.

Don't believe the hype!

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 17 May 2009]

This film must rank among the most overrated films on IMDb with an amazingly inflated score of 7.6 as of this date. To top it off, I even noticed some reviews that gave this film a 10!! So, if these folks are to be trusted, it would seem to say that this film is on par with CASABLANCA, THE GODFATHER and GONE WITH THE WIND!!! It is not, I repeat, is NOT a good movie. No matter the hype, this is a very poor B-film. The only reason anyone might want to watch it is to marvel at the Pre-Code sensibilities--including a lot of sexual innuendo and a scene in the men's locker room where bare butts abound! Even for a Pre-Code film, SEARCH FOR BEAUTY is a shocker.

As for the rest of the film, it's really quite terrible. Part of the problem is that young Buster Crabbe is fresh from the Olympics and really isn't much of an actor yet. The same can be said for a barely recognizable Ida Lupino. I say barely recognizable because she later had one of the biggest makeovers in Hollywood history--and if you didn't know better, you'd swear that it wasn't Ida! Unfortunately, she, too, can't act yet. Given more experience and time, she would become a heck of a talented lady, but here she is pretty flat.

The rest of the problem with the film is that the plot, while appearing very sleazy and sexually charged, is amazingly dull and impossible to believe. Now following the naked butts which abounded at the beginning of the film, you'd think that the rest of the film would be that adult. However, the plot involving a con man (Robert Armstrong) who wants to publish a skin magazine SOUNDS pretty hot, but he photos and sin-sational articles are so tame by modern standards that you really can't get particularly excited or interested in the film. The most salacious thing about the last 3/4 of the film are that some of the costumes worn by the athletes late in the film are rather transparent--surprisingly so. So I guess pervs could watch just the beginning (at the Olypmics) and the end (when the health resort is opened) and skip the rest!!

Overall, despite some cheap thrills in a film that, believe it or not, claims to be anti-pornography in its message, it is just not all that interesting or believable. In fact, after a while it's a real chore to keep watching it.

Gorgeous specimens

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 10/10 · 28 June 2005]

What a great idea for a movie! 'Search for Beauty' assembles some dazzling young specimens of physical perfection (both female and male) and places them in a smart-aleck comedy that's downright hilarious! Real-life Olympic swimming champion Buster Crabbe plays an Olympic swimming champion (but gets almost no swimming footage), and Ida Lupino plays an Olympic high-diving champion ... who emerges from the pool with her lipstick intact. I'm pleased to see Crabbe exhibiting real acting ability in a role that doesn't involve rayguns or loincloths.

This movie parodies the career of Bernarr MacFadden, a crackpot who made a fortune publishing 'health' magazines that were full of fad diets, copper bracelets and plenty of photographs of scantily-clad women and men.

Robert Armstrong plays a confidence trickster, partnered by Gertrude Michael as his Jean Dixon-ish wise-cracking moll. By the way, I really dislike the movie cliché of the female companion who is constantly insulting her male partner. If she really has so little respect for him, why does she stick with him? James Gleason is on hand here too, as another swindler. Surprisingly, Gleason's character is completely subordinate to Armstrong's. Gleason nearly always played the brains of the outfit, but here his character is largely Armstrong's yes-man. Still, Gleason gets off some splendid wise-cracking dialogue, including the word 'gazype' ... whatever that means.

There's an excellent montage sequence featuring actual footage from the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, and there are a couple of production numbers with lissome female athletes clambering on top of beefcake specimens. The comely Gwenllian Gill shows great appeal in her brief role. Silent-film comedian Leo White does one very funny slapstick bit, and Gleason's performance is more physical than usual. For one long sequence, we see the runty Gleason stripped down to a pair of gym trunks. Gleason gets the last gag in the picture, a cheeky joke that seems more typical of Lou Costello. 'Search for Beauty' is hilarious from start to finish (except for Toby Wing), and this film is definitely a pleasure to look at. I'll rate it a perfect 10 out of 10.

Fast, witty, unsophisticated entertainment that doesn't rise up very far, but it's fun

[secondtake · 6/10 · 28 February 2015]

Search for Beauty (1934)

You won't mistake this for a great movie, but it's fast and just perky enough to be fun. And it has Ida Lupino in an early American role.

The premise is a diluted sex hook—dozens of great beauties, male and female, are gathered together for a contest and a weekend of health and exercise. So naturally there is, eventually, a lot of skin and buff bodies. Unlike most movies like this, however, it's pretty evenly split between men and women. There is even a massive dance number at the end rather like a Busby Berkeley number. (His first famous dance extravaganza was the previous year.)

If the plot is a bit canned, it isn't quite obvious so will keep you guessing. The dialog is so fast it's frantic, and you'll never hear so much word play so relentlessly spoken. It's fun and funny—you can tell they had a blast writing the screenplay.

The leading man opposite Lupino is Buster Crabbe, a hunk of a pretty man who just didn't have the acting ability to turn it into stardom. A former Olympic gold medal swimmer, he has a short swimming role here, which is fun. He stuck to athletic roles most of his life—like a serialized version of Tarzan—and is stretched a bit thin for this part.

Not that this is a demanding movie. The two sidekick males are both character actors who you'll either enjoy or find irritating (because they push their schtick in well worn ways). Lupino is the highlight overall, still with some of her British accent. As the backstabbing and conniving builds, and the big last third of the movie takes off at a resort camp for fitness and beauty, the scenes get wilder and more chaotic.

Love will have its final say, however, and its satisfying enough—more so than that silly last shot as "the end" appears, with a small amount of relief.

How silly can you get?

[robert-temple-1 · 2/10 · 18 August 2009]

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.

Buster Crabbe's Yokumberry tonic

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 17 April 2013]

American swimming champion Buster Crabbe and British diving champion Ida Lupino co-star in Search For Beauty about two Olympic champions who get themselves involved with con artists Robert Armstrong and James Gleason who publish a salacious magazine with their girl Friday Gertrude Michael who gives both of them a reality check every so often.

Crabbe comes off little better than Abner Yokum who's been weaned on that famous Yokumberry tonic since he was an infant. He's got the muscles, but little desire for female companionship. I mean this boy is simply interested in improving the human species of which he and his fellow athletes are the prize specimens. Lupino as his Daisy Mae comes off little better.

I have to say though Armstrong and Gleason are quite a pair. Armstrong is poaching on Pat O'Brien territory and had Searching For Beauty been done at Warner Brothers, O'Brien would have done this without a doubt.

Anticipating Hugh Hefner by a generation the guys always make sure that articles of interest accompany the photographic layouts of the scantily clad males and females. The scene in the editorial room was a highlight of the film for me.

You won't have to look hard in Search For Beauty, it's all over the place to appreciate.

Daed and Flat

[cstotlar-1 · 3/10 · 18 June 2011]

It's hard to find a reason for this film. My best guess would be a as candidate for the race before the decency laws came into existence but that's only a guess. All those men and women in bathing suits haven't aged very well. They all look - er - the same after a while. I suppose an exposed ankle a few centuries ago sent men into rapturous poetic expanses so it's probably best to apply tolerance for the test of time. After all the film is in its 70's and things do creak. Imagining Leni Riefenstahl a few years later in her Olympiad married to "Triumph of the Will" with an extremely unfunny subplot sprinkled with very sub sub-Busby Berkley and that about ties things up.

Curtis Stotlar

A real treat from pre-Code days

[Darroch · 8/10 · 9 December 2009]

I have to weigh in on this deliciously fun, kitschy movie. Perhaps one needs a historical perspective to appreciate the fun and absurdity of this very game film. The detracting comments have missed the boat. The appreciative comments have laid out the story and gimmicks well. I'd like to add that the big production number, which looks like the concoction of marching band instructor from a military background who saw a Busby Berkeley movie while stoned, has to be seen to be believed. And, yes, the nudity and sexual innuendo seems risqué enough for the time to be very entertaining. Though short on talent, Buster Crabbe is fun to watch, as is a young Ida Lupino who certainly made good from this unpromising start. For me, James Gleason is the treat. Though not nearly as sharp as later performances -- particularly his great drunk scene in MEET JOHN DOE -- it's interesting to see a pro finding his sea-legs on film in 1934. A diamond in the rough!

Much Ado About Nothing

[EdgarST · 5/10 · 22 November 2020]

«Search for Beauty» is a curio today, as a "daring film" released shortly before the Hays Code came into effect in 1934. Based on the play «Love Your Body» by Schuyler E. Gray and Paul R. Milton, the movie contains beautiful bodies, dirty old men, procuring, racism, military propaganda, male nudity, a never-emerging gay undercurrent, and crude humor.

Robert Armstrong repeats the role of the businessman in search of the easy dollar that had played a year earlier in «King Kong», but this time he does not take us on an adventurous trip to Skull Island in search of a giant ape, but instead he buys the businesses of an old bodybuilder who has just passed away. They include a health and beauty magazine, and a farm to keep the body in shape and healthy. For the magazine to be successful, he hires two young Olympic champions as directors (American Buster Crabbe and British Ida Lupino), but what he really wants to do is a publication with sexy photos and lewd stories.

When the champions discover Armstrong's cheat, they pressure him to give them the management of the farm, where beautiful athletes of both sexes will arrive to participate in a contest to choose the healthiest (and most beautiful) body. However, Armstrong also arrives there and tries to turn the business into a white meat market.

So the story goes for the white meat market, because the pattern of beauty that this film is looking for is Caucasian, "with 30 winners in the International Beauty Contest", in which only white and English-speaking athletes from "England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the United States" will participate and perform a horrible "Symphony of Health" with choreography a la Busby Berkeley and military marches by Sousa and other composers of similar music.

«Search for Beauty» is not a transgressive or daring film, but it was out of circulation for a while. However, it seems to me that, with a few cuts, it would easily have passed censorship. No need to worry, because in the end everything returns to "order" (in a vulgar and rude way) and everything is conquered by... pure, chaste and white love.

p.s. I should add that Ida Lupino here was not yet the beautiful actress-director she would become. Instead, Buster Crabbe, the Olympic champion and star of the Flash Gordon serial, was a splendid male specimen. They did not need to search for beauty: it was there, leading the film cast.

Here's What You're Looking For Right Here, Baby!

[JLRMovieReviews · 8/10 · 1 December 2011]

Buster Crabbe, Ida Lupino, James Gleason, and Robert Armstrong, from the original King Kong, star in this film about an opportunist who tries to profit from people trying to learn how to get thin and make themselves beautiful and sexy-looking. Armstrong and Gleason are the leads who start a health magazine, with the endorsement of an athlete, played by Crabbe. Ultimately a health "farm" and resort are built to help people learn the healthy lifestyle. Made in 1934, right before the Hays Production banned explicit and amoral or immoral material in films, this films gets away with a lot. So, obviously this film has a place in American film history. But watching it, I'm sure, most people will not be thinking of it in terms of being historically important. There's cheesecake and beefcake and risqué innuendos in this film to satisfy anyone, except those brought up on "American Pie" movies, maybe. It's like a cross between circus and a car wreck; you can't not look. This film delivers human drama (Ida falling for Buster) and wry humor and quick one-liners like James Gleason's "I have nothing against sex. Either you have it or you're looking for it." There's really nothing left to say!

absolutely stupid

[writtenbymkm-583-902097 · 1/10 · 27 June 2022]

Everything about this turkey was absolutely stupid -- the story, the events, the script (assuming there actually was one). Not even Joel and the bots could have saved this one. I got so bored and frustrated that I fast-forwarded several times, especially through the endless "musical" numbers. The phrase "marching morons" popped into my head. Too bad you can't award zero stars. Yuck!!!

Forerunner of sexploitation comedies

[johannesaquila · 4/10 · 16 October 2021]

This film is from the last year in which the Hays code (Hollywood self-censorship) wasn't fully enforced yet. It is surprisingly osé for its time, including naked athletes in the shower filmed from behind or in white sportswear that shows a bit more than it should -- and standing still although in terms of the plot they should be moving.

As is typical for exploitation films, there is a thin plot that is just a pretext for showing the movie's selling point -- in this case sparsely clothed athletes. This film's plot is about some crooks fresh out of jail, turning to the legal business of publishing a magazine that has a pretext for showing sparsely clothed athletes. One can wonder if some of the people behind this movie were fresh out of jail... (Probably not the director. I checked that.)

It's an OK comedy. Some people will find it is worth watching once to see what was possible in 1934's Hollywood, or because they are interested in some of the actors (including famous athletes). But it's below average as a movie.

It's silly, it's implausible, I love it!

[sorrelloriginals · 8/10 · 8 August 2021]

In spite of its fairly high rating I noticed a few extremely negative reviews about this film and all I can say is... You people should get over yourself. Don't they realize it was never intended to be anything more than a sexy little romp with swimming pools and gymnasiums in the background? One thing that has always been true of show business in all it's forms is that sex sells tickets. Nothing has changed since this film was made. This plot which revolves around a magazine that relies on sexy photographs to sell copies is exactly the world we live in today.

Maybe I am wrong but in recent years has it not been true that the magazine called sports illustrated sells more copies of its "swimsuit issue" than any other. At least this film gives the well-built young men equal time with the athletic young women that are featured here. Whenever possible film makers showed actresses with as little clothing as they could get away with but you almost never see a man with his shirt off and considering the physiques of many of the male stars there's a good reason for that. The great actors of that era were mostly famous from the neck up.

As Shallow as its Name

[view_and_review · 5/10 · 12 April 2024]

"Search for Beauty" was something like "Star Search" if the search criteria was beauty and health.

A recently released convict named Larry Williams (Robert Armstrong) got out of prison and was already brimming with an idea to make money. This idea was supposed to be legitimate unlike his idea that landed him and Jean Strange (Gertrude Michael) in prison. He wanted to print a health and fitness magazine. He needed Jean's help and Dan Healy's money. Both would take considerable persuasion to join him.

First he got Jean on board with a lot of persistence. She was still sore at him for the non-existent oil wells he told her about. The two then went out to get two representatives of the magazine. For that they went to the 1932 Olympics held in Los Angeles. They found a swimmer by the name of Don Jackson (Buster Crabbe) and a diver by the name of Barbara Hilton (Ida Lupino). Both were beautiful and healthy, the exact image and message they wanted to present to sell magazines.

After getting the two athletes, Larry (Robert Armstrong) began working on Dan Healy (James Gleason) for the money needed to fund the whole thing.

With all the pieces together they were off, except that Don and Barbara (the athletes) wanted to run the magazine legitimately and ethically, while Larry, Dan, and Jean wanted to do whatever it took to get the money rolling in. They would battle until the very end.

"Search for Beauty" wasn't very compelling. It was an anemic plot to begin with and it wasn't helped any with the performances. Perhaps they were relying on selling tickets with all the beautiful faces and bods, but that only has so much appeal. No one's going to pay to stare at nice bodies for over an hour unless they are doing something interesting. "Search for Beauty" was about as shallow as it sounds, and I prefer something a tad deeper. At least something that comes up to my knees.

Hollywood Democratic elite falls in line with the party enforcing American Fascism

[ScenicRoute · 10/10 · 8 July 2015]

A 10 for the politics and the for sex the politics disproves of. A key aspect of the movie that most reviewers miss is the essential plot turn requiring the appearance of a federal "morals agent." If that isn't fascism, ca 1934, then I don't know what is. Once he's there, everyone falls in line with the new order.

And a new order it was. 1934 was the year the Democratic Party, in a pay-off to its key Roman-Catholic voting bloc (always and still a party of factions), finally enforced the Hayes Code. What makes this movie fascinating is that the movie itself self-consciously enforces the Hayes Code by showing what the Hayes Code prohibits - lots of bouncing breasts, including visible nipples, as other reviewers note - but those are really cover for lots of gorgeous young men, either naked (in an early scene) or (in a later scene) in tank tops and really tight (and of course bulging) short shorts marching militantly, enough to give the Hitler in all fascists a good hard-on.

Most reviewers say the movie is worth watching as a swan-song to the pre-code era. I disagree. This movie is a must-see to understand the scandal that was and remains the Democratic Party. Sure, the Republicans have their scandals, but isn't every high school student of American History taught all of them? The American cultural elite presents the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, then Jim Crow, then American Fascism (via FDR), then corrupt hypocrisy,(via JFK), then bureaucratic incompetence (via Carter and Obama) as the saintly party? The party that will solve all our problems if only given complete control of all levers of power? This was the message in 1934, and it remains the message in 2015. We ignore it at our peril, as members of this year's crop of Democratic presidential candidates (Sanders and Clinton) include as part of their platform the evisceration of the first amendment? So watch this movie, one of the first that presents Democrats as the party of moral superiority, an attitude that the current White House trumpets almost every day.

But if this movie was just crude 1930s Democratic Party American Fascism propaganda, whose primary focus was the suppression of the liberation of the female libido so evident in pre-code movies, it still would not be worth watching. As noted above, however, this movie is both that and a wonderful celebration of pre-code liberation, as somewhat sadly captured by the wonderful Gertrude Michael. She knows the times are changing, and while her performance has real vigor at the beginning of the movie, by the end of the movie she is weary with defeat. Regardless, Michaels is superb throughout, and at only 23, hard to believe that she is already over-the-hill, but she is, and at the finale it is clear she has been supplanted by the dyed-blonde Ida Lupino, who is excellent as well, but also scary as she embraces the American version of Hitler-youth, by welcoming the vice squad capitan.

And what cojones Robert Armstrong has. A full 21 years older than Michaels, he plays her for the true-blue girl-friend he knows he can keep. However, he also knows, as an ex-con, that he's holding a pretty lousy hand in the movie's plot, but he plays it for all its worth. How subtle his performance is compared to the crude Anglo-machismo of Buster Crabbe (What a physique! What a bad actor!). I wish his team, celebrating the Republican virtues of liberty, and its necessary corollary of libertarianism when it comes to matters of sex, could have won the conflict, but that was not to be in 1934, not in Germany or Italy, and certainly not in the US.

And no review of the movie can be complete without lauding James Gleason, who of course does a fine comic turn as the shady money-guy. The movie ends with Gleason mooning us, and it is a fitting good-bye to the sexual liberation that did not die, but would be suppressed for another 30 years. For who wants to look at Gleason's butt for long? The American Fascists deliberately end the movie this way, to remind the viewer that they will be better off now that the feds are actively policing morals....

And for those cultural liberals, as I am certainly one, who always vote the Democratic ticket for moral reasons, don't think the 1930s vice-squad enforcement of behavior and speech codes had no tragic or devastating consequences in the US, just as the same enforcement today will do the same, then think again. Think of Billy Haines being driven from Hollywood, and all the great actresses, most notably Ruth Chatterton and Helen Twelvetrees, who could no longer find parts suitable for their femme libre personalities. And if this happened in the fake world of cinema, you can imagine what was going on in real life. It couldn't have been pretty, and there had to be a lot of suffering. Perhaps if the American people had risen up and fought for its cinematic and personal freedoms in 1934, then it would have more readily resisted the rise of Nazi Germany. But the course of American cinema shows the exact opposite happening, with 1937's "Love, Honor, and Behave" an outright celebration of National Socialism, right down to Priscilla Lane practicing her German as she belts out "Bei Mir Bist Du (sic) Schane (Schon)." Yuk, and in 2015 we are paying the price for not understanding this shameful history of ours, and the key role the Democratic Party plays in it. So watch this movie so that we don't once again have to repeat history.

Fun pre-Code film

[preppy-3 · 8/10 · 5 July 2023]

Fast-moving and fun! Two Olympic athletes (Buster Crabbe, an unrecognizable Ida Lupino) are bought in to run a health and beauty magazine. They fall in love quickly. They also find out the owners of the magazine are going to turn it into a "skin" rag. They have to battle them and keep their love alive.

Made just before the Production Code came into effect this movie is full of sexual innuendo and even some male nudity in a locker room sequence! Also there are plenty of handsome muscular guys walking around in tight bathing trunks and girls wearing very form-fitting suits. There's also a huge production number with them. Crabbe and Lupino are both very attractive and good in their roles. This doesn't pop up often on TV (for obvious reasons) but it's worth catching if you can.