Search for Beauty | |
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Directed by | Erle C. Kenton |
Screenplay by | Claude Binyon David Boehm Frank Butler Sam Hellman Maurine Dallas Watkins |
Produced by | E. Lloyd Sheldon |
Starring | Buster Crabbe Ida Lupino Robert Armstrong James Gleason Toby Wing Gertrude Michael |
Cinematography | Harry Fischbeck |
Edited by | James Smith |
Music by | John Leipold |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 78 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Search for Beauty is a 1934 American pre-Code dramedy film with some musical athletic sequences in the style of Busby Berkeley. It was directed by Erle C. Kenton and stars Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino. The film was released shortly before Lupino's 16th birthday.
Jackson, a swimmer, and Hilton, a diver, are Olympic champions and a romantic couple who become the face of a sleazy health magazine. [1] A pair of ex-cons team with the magazine's publisher to bring them down.
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]
Some have considered the magazine publishing company depicted in the film to be a parody of the publishing enterprises owned by Bernarr Macfadden. [3]
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." [4] 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." [5]
Ida Lupino was a British actress, director, writer, and producer. Throughout her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed eight, working primarily in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. She is widely regarded as the most prominent female filmmaker working in the 1950s during the Hollywood studio system. With her independent production company, she co-wrote and co-produced several social-message films and became the first woman to direct a film noir, The Hitch-Hiker, in 1953.
Clara Lou "Ann" Sheridan was an American actress and singer. She is best known for her roles in the films San Quentin (1937) with Humphrey Bogart, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) with James Cagney and Bogart, They Drive by Night (1940) with George Raft and Bogart, City for Conquest (1940) with Cagney and Elia Kazan, The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) with Bette Davis, Kings Row (1942) with Ronald Reagan, Nora Prentiss (1947), and I Was a Male War Bride (1949) with Cary Grant.
Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh. He was known for portraying John Wilkes Booth in the silent film The Birth of a Nation (1915) and for directing such films as the widescreen epic The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne in his first leading role, The Roaring Twenties starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra (1941) starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart, and White Heat (1949) starring James Cagney and Edmond O'Brien. He directed his last film in 1964. His work has been noted as influences on directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jack Hill, and Martin Scorsese.
Jane Darwell was an American actress of stage, film, and television. With appearances in more than 100 major movies spanning half a century, Darwell is perhaps best remembered for her poignant portrayal of the matriarch and leader of the Joad family in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Molly Lamont was a South African-British film actress.
John Elmer Carson, known as Jack Carson, was a Canadian-born American film actor. Carson often played the role of comedic friend in films of the 1940s and 1950s, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) with Cary Grant. He appeared in such dramas as Mildred Pierce (1945), A Star is Born (1954), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). He worked for RKO and MGM, but most of his notable work was for Warner Bros.
Jean Rogers was an American actress who starred in serial films in the 1930s and low–budget feature films in the 1940s as a leading lady. She is best remembered for playing Dale Arden in the science-fiction serials Flash Gordon (1936) and Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938).
Mark John Hellinger was an American journalist, theatre columnist and film producer.
Private Hell 36 is a 1954 American crime film noir directed by Don Siegel starring Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran, Howard Duff, Dean Jagger and Dorothy Malone.
Thank Your Lucky Stars is a 1943 American musical comedy film made by Warner Brothers as a World War II fundraiser, with a slim plot involving theater producers. The stars donated their salaries to the Hollywood Canteen, which was founded by John Garfield and Bette Davis, who appear in this film. It was directed by David Butler and stars Eddie Cantor, Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, Edward Everett Horton and S.Z. Sakall.
Yours for the Asking is a 1936 American comedy film starring George Raft as a casino owner and Dolores Costello as the socialite he hires as hostess. The movie also features Ida Lupino and was directed by Alexander Hall.
Rumba is a 1935 American musical drama film starring George Raft as a Cuban dancer and Carole Lombard as a Manhattan socialite. The movie was directed by Marion Gering and is considered an unsuccessful follow-up to Raft and Lombard's smash hit Bolero the previous year.
To the Last Man is a 1933 American Pre-Code Western film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Randolph Scott and Esther Ralston. The screenplay by Jack Cunningham was based on a story by Zane Grey. The Paramount property was previously made as a silent film, Victor Fleming's 1923 film version of the same title. The supporting cast of Hathaway's version features Noah Beery Sr., Jack La Rue, Buster Crabbe, Barton MacLane, Shirley Temple, Fuzzy Knight, Gail Patrick and John Carradine.
Albert E. Lewis was a Polish-born Broadway and film producer. His family emigrated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York when he was a boy. He became a vaudeville comedian, then started a partnership producing one-act plays for vaudeville. Around 1930 he moved to Hollywood and worked as a film producer with Paramount, RKO, and MGM until after World War II.
Colin Edward Livingstone Tapley was a New Zealand actor in both American and British films. Born in New Zealand, he served in the Royal Air Force and an expedition to Antarctica before winning a Paramount Pictures talent contest and moving to Hollywood. He acted in a number of films before moving to Britain during the Second World War as a flight controller with the Royal Canadian Air Force.
The Great O'Malley is a 1937 American crime drama film directed by William Dieterle and starring Pat O'Brien, Sybil Jason, Humphrey Bogart, and Ann Sheridan. The 1925 silent version The Making of O'Malley starred Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill and Helen Rowland.
Smart Girl is a 1935 American comedy drama film directed by Aubrey Scotto and starring Ida Lupino, Kent Taylor and Gail Patrick. It was produced by Walter Wanger and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Ready for Love is a 1934 American romantic comedy film directed by Marion Gering and presented by Adolph Zukor for Paramount Pictures. It stars Richard Arlen, Ida Lupino, and Marjorie Rambeau. It is inspired by the play The Whipping by Eulalie Spence, based on the 1930 novel The Whipping by Roy Flanagan. The film is about school runaway Marigold Tate who "journeys to her retired aunt's home where she soon faces small-town bigotry", and falls in love with handsome newspaper editor Julian Barrow.
Lady Be Careful is a 1936 American drama film directed by Theodore Reed and written by Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, and Harry Ruskin, adapted from the play by Kenyon Nicholson and Charles Knox Robinson. The film stars Lew Ayres, Mary Carlisle, Benny Baker, Buster Crabbe, Grant Withers, and Irving Bacon. The film was released on September 4, 1936, by Paramount Pictures.
Arizona Mahoney is a 1936 American Western film directed by James P. Hogan and written by Stuart Anthony and Robert Yost. The film stars Joe Cook, Robert Cummings, June Martel, Buster Crabbe, Marjorie Gateson and John Miljan. It is based on the short story "Stairs of Sand" by Zane Grey. The film was released on December 4, 1936, by Paramount Pictures.