jjnxn-1 Not nearly as racy as many pre-codes this is an innocuous trifle starring a virtually unrecognizable Ida Lupino. New to Hollywood they were trying to make her over into an English Jean Harlow fortunately it didn't work and the ultra blonde thin eyebrowed look she is saddled with here disappeared within a short period. Still buried beneath all the gunk she gives a nicely flinty performance foreshadowing the tough broad persona to come. The same can not be said for Buster Crabbe, an extremely fit and handsome man but an actor of little ability. James Gleason is the only other actor to offer up any kind of distinctive work, he's not remarkable but does his standard hot tempered wiseguy part well. Ann Sheridan makes her screen debut here, unbilled and without lines, as the Texas winner of the Search for Beauty contest but unless you knew it was her the two tiny bits she is in sail right by. The story is paper thin and aside from a few references to drugs and a couple of bare male bottoms in a locker room scene nothing you wouldn't see after the code went into place. The big production number, to Sousa music yet, is a clunky mess designed solely to show off the fine physical attributes of the winners. As such it works but it is eye rollingly awful in every other way.

JLRMovieReviews Buster Crabbe, Ida Lupino, James Gleason, and Robert Armstrong, from the original King Kong, star in this film about an opportunist who tries to profit from people trying to learn how to get thin and make themselves beautiful and sexy-looking. Armstrong and Gleason are the leads who start a health magazine, with the endorsement of an athlete, played by Crabbe. Ultimately a health "farm" and resort are built to help people learn the healthy lifestyle. Made in 1934, right before the Hays Production banned explicit and amoral or immoral material in films, this films gets away with a lot. So, obviously this film has a place in American film history. But watching it, I'm sure, most people will not be thinking of it in terms of being historically important. There's cheesecake and beefcake and risqué innuendos in this film to satisfy anyone, except those brought up on "American Pie" movies, maybe. It's like a cross between circus and a car wreck; you can't not look. This film delivers human drama (Ida falling for Buster) and wry humor and quick one-liners like James Gleason's "I have nothing against sex. Either you have it or you're looking for it." There's really nothing left to say!

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.

MartinHafer This film must rank among the most overrated films on IMDb with an amazingly inflated score of 7.6 as of this date. To top it off, I even noticed some reviews that gave this film a 10!! So, if these folks are to be trusted, it would seem to say that this film is on par with CASABLANCA, THE GODFATHER and GONE WITH THE WIND!!! It is not, I repeat, is NOT a good movie. No matter the hype, this is a very poor B-film. The only reason anyone might want to watch it is to marvel at the Pre-Code sensibilities--including a lot of sexual innuendo and a scene in the men's locker room where bare butts abound! Even for a Pre-Code film, SEARCH FOR BEAUTY is a shocker.As for the rest of the film, it's really quite terrible. Part of the problem is that young Buster Crabbe is fresh from the Olympics and really isn't much of an actor yet. The same can be said for a barely recognizable Ida Lupino. I say barely recognizable because she later had one of the biggest makeovers in Hollywood history--and if you didn't know better, you'd swear that it wasn't Ida! Unfortunately, she, too, can't act yet. Given more experience and time, she would become a heck of a talented lady, but here she is pretty flat.The rest of the problem with the film is that the plot, while appearing very sleazy and sexually charged, is amazingly dull and impossible to believe. Now following the naked butts which abounded at the beginning of the film, you'd think that the rest of the film would be that adult. However, the plot involving a con man (Robert Armstrong) who wants to publish a skin magazine SOUNDS pretty hot, but he photos and sin-sational articles are so tame by modern standards that you really can't get particularly excited or interested in the film. The most salacious thing about the last 3/4 of the film are that some of the costumes worn by the athletes late in the film are rather transparent--surprisingly so. So I guess pervs could watch just the beginning (at the Olypmics) and the end (when the health resort is opened) and skip the rest!!Overall, despite some cheap thrills in a film that, believe it or not, claims to be anti-pornography in its message, it is just not all that interesting or believable. In fact, after a while it's a real chore to keep watching it.