Search for Beauty

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!

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.

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

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.

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.