I picked up the new pre-code collection of films being offered by Universal from the Paramount vaults and managed to sit down and give one a try this past afternoon. I'm much more conditioned to Warner's, and to a lesser degree MGM's, pre-code output, so I was curious to see how another studio conducted itself during the period. At this point, mind you just 1 down, 5 to go in this box set, Paramount's got some ground to make-up.
I debated starting out with either Murder at the Vanities (1934) or Search for Beauty (1934) as I'd read good things about both, so deciding I wasn't really in the mood for a musical I (hopefully) made the mistake of going with the latter.
Top billed in Search for Beauty are a pair of youngsters playing Olympic champions who would both go on to greater film fame, Ida Lupino, later the female lead in all the top Warner's films missing Bette Davis, and Larry "Buster" Crabbe, an actual 1932 Olympic Gold Medalist who is most associated with playing both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers a little later on.
Buster Crabbe featured on a 1934 Dixie Premium Photo
The actual stars of the picture are King Kong's (1933) Robert Armstrong, character actor James Gleason, and Gertrude Michael who you may remember from Cleopatra (1934). Also featured here, and somehow billed ahead of Gertrude Michael, is Toby Wing.
You often hear how some of the more famous pre-code films, Three on a Match (1932) and Red-Headed Woman (1932) spring to mind as examples, were actually intended at original release as women's pictures. That being so, Search for Beauty then comes off by modern comparison to any low-brow comedy striving for an R-rating by showing as much skin as possible.
They say Search for Beauty couldn't have been made just a few months later, and while I do agree, at the same time I don't think it would have been a huge loss to film history.
Ida Lupino is featured here on a 1939 Mars Confections Trading Card
The main point of the picture seemed to be to gather together the American and international beauty winners, put them all in swimsuits, and parade them around in a number which reminded me of some distasteful cross between a very poorly run Busby Berkeley spectacle and a really well run cult. I somehow managed to keep from skipping past this scene and stared at the beauties instead, several of which from both sexes were a bit on a the chunky side. The men all donned tight-fitting shorts, the women all went braless with super tight shirts on, as each state or nation's representatives bound past us with camera trained tight on their torsos while they skip by.
Look, reading over this you may think I absolutely despised Search for Beauty, and that's actually not the case. For one thing I just happen to be immature enough to have chuckled at a few of the jokes. Also I like Ida Lupino and enjoyed the chance to see her at work so young (just 20 at Search for Beauty's release). Robert Armstrong basically played Denham from Kong again, here as a fast talking con man publisher. I don't know if that's a plus, but I've got no problem with Denham.
James Gleason, who I usually like quite a bit, actually bothered me throughout this one. I was as annoyed as Armstrong's character by his constant parroting of his lines, might have been funny once or twice, but not every time. Maybe I'm just turned off by his appearing in a skimpy pair of shorts himself at the end of the film, I don't think anyone, save Mrs. Gleason, needed to see that. That's kind of the point here in regards to Search for Beauty though. Super-skinny James Gleason in a pair of tight swim trunks is intended to be funny. I get it, it's ridiculous, but it caught me somewhere between wanting to either look away or stare at the train wreck, all the while wondering who Gleason pissed off at Paramount.
My most pleasant surprise of Search for Beauty was Gertrude Michael, who I enjoyed enough that I look forward to seeing her again in Murder at the Vanities ... despite Search for Beauty. She was the most natural actor in the movie, better even than this young platinum version of Lupino, and despite a somewhat unusual face was quite attractive in her own way as well. She actually had the dirtiest part in the picture in terms of executing a double-cross on the innocent kids, Crabbe and Lupino, but pulled it off without you thinking any less of her.
Gertrude Michael is shown on a 1936 R95 black & white premium photo, printed on a paper with a linen-like texture
Right now I'm left thinking of Gertude Michael as another version of what I've come to think of as the Claire Dodd or Helen Vinson type: A somewhat sophisticated 1930's woman who's had a look at life, graduating from our hero's ideal to the woman into whose trap they'll happily fall. They're not femme fatales by any means, just, well, wily would probably be the best term.
Finally, Toby Wing, well, wow! This is the first time I'm aware of having had seen her, and I just can't believe she didn't blow up into a star of some caliber or at least a more memorable sex symbol. She reminded me a little of Alice White. Her acting wasn't terrible, except I'm still trying to decide if I could have done without those semi-annoying little sex-charged squeals she'd put at the end of sentences. And I have to admit I couldn't pry my eyes away from the screen when she stripped off a layer of clothes and jumped up on a table to dance for the band of perverts Armstrong and Gleason had assembled into Crabbe and Lupino's health clinic. After her cousin, played by Lupino, bumps Toby out the door Ida does her own little table dance as well.
Toby Wing, here on a 1938 Carreras Film Stars Tobacco Card
So can you see why I expected more? Sure, Search for Beauty is sinful, but it's little else. While it's got plenty of what you think of when you think of pre-code I really didn't care too much about what happened to any of the characters, except maybe Gertude Michael's. The final resolution isn't really much more than good triumphing over kinda bad in a weak story. It closes with James Gleason bending over, sticking out his backside for Robert Armstrong and the words "The End" then being plastered across it.
By the way, if you're buying this set and looking forward to the advertised documentary, Forbidden Film: The Production Code Era, well, don't. It's good, yes, but it's also only about ten minutes long.
Have you seen Search for Beauty? If you've got something to add please feel free to leave your comments below.
I’m a huge Toby Wing fan (I’d written her a letter once regarding my review of her son Richard’s murder— ironically the letter was returned undeliverable the day she died in 2001). Paramount was riding on the skids by 1934— facing the prospect of their hottest property, Mae West being reigned in by the Production Code that May. Bing Crosby wasn’t able to carry the burden of the entire studio as Deanna Durbin would with the “New” Universal a couple of years later. Universal had their monsters and all those Laemmles until it came crashing down under the weight of SUTTER’S GOLD and the SHOW BOAT delays and cost overruns. Paramount, whose long (and increasingly desperate) reliance on sex and skin (go ahead and watch MURDER AT THE VANITIES and see what I mean) couldn’t shift gears fast enough to fend of bankruptcy. A neutered Mae West was no box office draw.
Toby was signed to Paramount, of course, as a result of her dad’s on-again/off-again mid-level position there. A friendship with star Jack Okie led to an introduction with Mack Sennett who was the nominal boss of Paramount’s shorts department (a broken man, he’d lost his studio in a painful bankruptcy and it would become the home of Republic Pictures), and being a total hottie, Toby had tongues wagging all over the lot. Studio finances would wreck havoc on her career however— she’s was loaned out for bit parts at Warners (in BABY FACE— a boffo pre-code Stanwyck potboiler she’s tasked with simply glaring at Ruby for all of 3 seconds). Getting promotional value on loaner bits was impossible. Her career would never gain any logical ascent— she did a constant mish mash of work— a credited part would be followed by a bit, then a short, another bit, a starring role in a Poverty Row quickie, another uncredited bit…her most notable appearance (being warbled to by a 28-year old Dick Powell 42ND STREET while wearing that white fox bra in the ‘Young and Healthy’ number went uncredited… robbery!) . Toby’s $150 a week contract at Paramount was nothing compared to her endorsement contracts and her personal life was covered by every film fan rag in the country from 1933-early 1938, where she was often mis-tagged as ‘The Baby Mae West.” There’s plenty of photographic evidence she was getting into nightclubs without any help from fake ID… she was engaged numerous times (including one secret romp with a pilot she fell for, John T. Helm, who would be killed soon afterward). She famously dumped Jackie Coogan over his drinking (to be fair, it happened while he discovered his parents squandered his childhood fortune), and hillbilly-ish singer (and future oilman) Pinky Tomlin. Howard Hughes tried to nail her, Gary Cooper might have (he was Paramount’s version of Colin Farrell) and she had a whirlwind fling with Canadian department store millionaires who financed her thoroughly strange low budget starring in THOROUGHBRED (Dominion Pictures, 1935) starring another horndog, Kenne Duncan.
Toby’s film career went nowhere. She ended up pretty much were she began, it an uncredited bit part allegedly in SWEETHEARTS (1937)— allegedly, since I’ve seen this 3 times and couldn’t find her. She met and fell for a famous pilot, Richard T. “Dick” Merrill, who was only months younger than her dad. A quickie marriage in Tijuana horrified her socially-conscious mother in Virginia… and they had a second “real” ceremony some weeks later. Despite all predictions to the contrary, the marriage lasted 45 years— Toby, despite her idiotic squeals and dumb-blond persona, was a very intelligent lady. She took the lessons learned from her real restate billionaire (yes, with a ‘b’) brother and invested shrewdly in real estate and became independently wealthy. Her sister, Pat Wing (Gill) would have a similar kind of career at Warners.
Interestingly she made an appearance in Broadway in the infamous Cole Porter musical floperoo, YOU NEVER KNOW that starred the notorious torch singer, Libby Holman and the emotionally volatile Mexican Spitfire Lupe Velez who despised each other (this was in production at the time of Porter’s riding accident that would eventually cost him his leg… watch the flawed Kevin Spacey biopic).
After Dick’s death in 1982 she spent the remainder of her life traveling between her home in California and Virginia— the couple’s Miami home was sold after their 42-year old son was murdered there as a result of large-scale marijuana trafficking— he’d been indicted and was likely murdered by minions of the Carlos Marcello mob out of New Orleans (a co-defendant in the case had an interesting explosion in his van that his lawyer attributed to radial tire failure). Their son was well aware of his situation and had taken numerous security precautions— to no avail, of course. The case is still open in Miami, the investigation floundered amid the cocaine war that erupted in South Florida in 1982.
Toby went out on a high note— appearing in the Hugh Hefner financed BUSBY BERKELEY: THROUGH THE ROOF and was always tickled to receive fan mail, send increasingly shaky autographs and tell people how proud she was of her two granddaughters. She died on March 22, 2001.
Thanks for the awesome comment @incompleteangler, this is a post in itself! Not sure if you noticed the date on this one, but I wrote it a little over five years ago and have since bumped into Toby (and Pat) many times ever since. Her spot with Powell in 42nd STREET has to be one of the greatest non-speaking appearances in any movie. “There’s Toby,” I say every time now, as though she were one of the family–she’s absolutely beaming there! I wish they gave her more to do in the movies she appeared in. I don’t think you mentioned KISS AND MAKE-UP (1934) with Cary Grant, I think she actually had a bit to do in that one. Thanks again!