1934 film by Erle C. Kenton
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.
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]
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]
