Come On, Marines!

Poor Ida Lupino left a burgeoning film career in England for stardom in Hollywood but ended up in the atrocious SEARCH FOR BEAUTY. As if that wasn't bad enough her next picture was this - which was even worse! Why she didn't jump on the next boat back to Liverpool is anyone's guess. The most polite description of this picture is: absolute garbage.

The plot concerns that immortal question which philosophers have debated since the time of Socrates: how would a group of sex-starved marines rescue a group of sex-starved young women who have been shipwrecked in the jungle where they spend their days playing in a pool in their underwear. It sounds like one of those pictures which is so bad it's good but don't be fooled - it's just bad. Did someone really get paid for writing this?

I don't know what's worse: the acting, the direction, the script or the story. Richard Arlen (who got his break in the movies by being taken into Paramount's medical centre after accidentally crashing his motorcycle into their gates!) substitutes normal acting for a series shouts and snarls.

Arlen is however Laurence Olivier compared with Toby Wing. That's the big dichotomy with this picture because Toby Wing is the only reason to watch this trash. The girl couldn't act for toffee but since in most of her scenes she's just in skimpy underwear, acting ability isn't really something anyone is concerned with. You can see why she earned the title: 'the most beautiful chorus girl in the world.' She truly was utterly, utterly gorgeous - had this picture been lit and photographed half-decently, every 14 year old boy in the world since 1934 would have had a copy of this film hidden under his bed!