Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

secondtake 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.

bkoganbing 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.

ptb-8 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!

robert-temple-1 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.