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!

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.

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.

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....

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?".