OMG! They're all naked and everything!

 

 

Yes, it’s the June Taylor dancers, lined up in Charles Foster Kane’s hallway:

 

 

No, it’s “Search for Beauty,” one of two pre-Code movies on the “Forbidden Hollywood” disk.

 

 

Obviously it’s not that forbidden if you can get it from Netflix, but it was verboten for a while after the new standards of morality came in circa 1930. (They weren't enforced until 1934; these movies squeaked in under the wire,)

 

 

Yes, if WASP girls are there, we will find them! At first you're hopeful of some 30s cinematography, such as this bike ride choreographed by Leni Riefenstahl:

 

 

But that's about it. You don't get buckets of sin. Not even a small cup. Crabbe and Lupino play pretty decent people who’ve been roped into a gig with a salacious “Health and Exercise” magazine:

 


 

Don’t be deceived! It uses its wholesome title as a pretext for showing ladies in swimming suits. Or NASA extravehicular-activity suits; hard to tell with some. Sordid as it may sound, it’s actually a comedy, and has dated as well as bananas released during the same year. The other movie on the disk is much more interesting, at least as a historical record:

 

 

THIS is more like it, 30s-wise:

 

 

Vanities? Whose vanities?

 

 

Yes, Earl Carroll, famed theatrical producer, known as the "Troubadour of the Nude." What a box office! What swells! What top hats! What a show!

 



The “Murder” is a bit of backstage intrigue, and to be honest I skipped over it; the only reason anyone watches the movie is for the filmed version of the famed Vanities. And brother, it delivers:

 

 

I’m sure they do. (It’s a routine that glamorizes the glamorous girls in glamorous professions, like Cigarette Sellers. Really.) This must have popped eyes:

 

 

You know she’s wearing a body stocking, but it’s still rrrrracy for the times.

Imagine this projected on a 30-foot screen, and you can see why the Comstocks were worried about public morals:

 

 

Two moments deserve a clip. The first is a bracing bit of dialogue - don’t think I’ve ever, and I mean ever heard this in a movie from this era.

 

 

That's Jack Oakie. Judas H. Priest!

We conclude with a clip from a production number. What’s she singing about? She can’t be singing about that, can she?

Oh yes. Yes she is.

 

Fourteen years after the film was made, Carroll died in a plane crash in Pennsylvania. Also on the plane: Jack Oakie's first wife.