Search for Beauty

1934 film by Erle C. Kenton

February 2, 1934 (1934-02-02)

Running time

78 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglish

Search for Beauty is a 1934 American pre-Code dramedy film, with some musical Busby Berkeley-esque athletic sequences, directed by Erle C. Kenton and starring Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino (the film was released shortly before Lupino's 16th birthday).

Plot

Jackson and Hilton are a pair of lovers and aquatic champion Olympians (he a swimmer, she a diver) who become the face of a health magazine, which over their objections is turned into a "skin" rag.^[1] A pair of ex-cons with have a 'scheme' (and both have designs to break up the loving couple for themselves), and Healy is their cohort.

Cast

Buster Crabbe as Don Jackson
Ida Lupino as Barbara Hilton
Robert Armstrong as Larry Williams
James Gleason as Dan Healy, the 'publisher'
Toby Wing as Sally Palmer, Barbara's cousin
Gertrude Michael as Jean Strange
Bradley Page as Joe Garrett
Frank McGlynn, Sr. as Rev. Rankin
Nora Cecil as Miss Pettigrew
Virginia Hammond as Mrs. Archibald Henderson-James
Eddie Gribbon as Adolph Knockler
James B. 'Pop' Kenton as Caretaker
Lynn Bari as Beauty Contest Entrant (uncredited)
Maurice Costello as Health Acres Guest (uncredited)
Joyzelle Joyner as Beauty Contest Entrant (uncredited)
Ann Sheridan as Texas Beauty Winner (uncredited)

Production

To promote the film, and to find some of the cast, Paramount sponsored a worldwide beauty contest. One of the winners, who made her first appearance in the film, was Ann Sheridan.^[2]

Reception

The film was widely panned. New York Times critic "A.D.S." wrote, "Search for Beauty is the film that Paramount manufactured as the climax of an international exploitation stunt in which thirty young men and women from various parts of the world received a free trip to Hollywood and an opportunity to get into one picture. The result is a tribute to the studio's ingenuity but a less than thrilling tidbit for the man in the street."^[3] Writing in Variety, critic "Bige" agreed: "Story is just so much applesauce ... Miss Lupino, to save her kid cousin from the clutches of a roomful of evil-minded stews, does a snakehips atop a table. She didn't learn that in England."^[4]

Notes

The magazine publishing company shown in the film has been interpreted as a parody of the publishing enterprises owned by Bernarr Macfadden at the time.^[5]

References

^ Search for Beauty, tcm.com, accessed October 12, 2010.
^ Jarvis, Douglas (1985). Encyclopedia of Film Stars. Gallery Books. p. 94. ISBN 9780831727956.
^ "Those Contest Winners". The New York Times. February 10, 1934. Retrieved June 14, 2023.
^ "Search for Beauty". Variety. February 13, 1934. Retrieved June 14, 2023.
^ Erickson, Hal (2017). Any Resemblance to Actual Persons: The Real People Behind 400+ Fictional Movie Characters. McFarland. p. 276. ISBN 9781476629308.

Sources

Doherty, Thomas Patrick. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934. New York: Columbia University Press 1999. ISBN 0-231-11094-4