Search for Beauty

Jackson, a swimmer, and Hilton, a diver, are Olympic champions and a romantic couple who become the face of a sleazy health magazine.[https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/89346/search-for-beauty Search for Beauty], tcm.com, accessed October 12, 2010. A pair of ex-cons team with the magazine's publisher to bring them down.

File:Buster Crabbe in Search for Beauty.jpg in a publicity still for the film.]]

• 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)

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.{{cite book|page=94|title=Encyclopedia of Film Stars|first=Douglas|last=Jarvis|publisher=Gallery Books|year=1985|ISBN=9780831727956}}

Some have considered the magazine publishing company depicted in the film to be a parody of the publishing enterprises owned by Bernarr Macfadden.{{cite book |last=Erickson |first=Hal |title=Any Resemblance to Actual Persons: The Real People Behind 400+ Fictional Movie Characters |publisher=McFarland |year=2017 |ISBN=9781476629308 |page=276}}

The film was widely panned. New York Times critic Andre Sennwald 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."{{cite web|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/02/10/95473488.html?pageNumber=20|website=The New York Times|date=February 10, 1934|title=Those Contest Winners|accessdate=June 14, 2023}} Variety 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."{{cite magazine|date=February 13, 1934 |title=Search for Beauty |url=https://archive.org/details/variety113-1934-02/page/n97/mode/2up?q=%22search+for+beauty%22+crabbe+armstrong+lupino+1934 |magazine=Variety|access-date=June 14, 2023}}

{{reflist}}

• 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}}

• {{tcmdb title|id=89346|title=Search for Beauty}}
• {{IMDb title|id=0025755|title=Search for Beauty}}

{{Erle C. Kenton}}

Category:1934 films

Category:1934 comedy-drama films

Category:American comedy-drama films

Category:Films directed by Erle C. Kenton

Category:American black-and-white films

Category:1930s American films

Category:Films scored by John Leipold

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