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Beauty for the Asking is a 1939 film drama produced by RKO Pictures, and starring Lucille Ball and Patric Knowles.

Plot

Jean Russell is a beautician who is jilted by her boyfriend so he can marry an older but wealthy woman. Russell invents a new facial cream, and with the financial backing of her former boyfriend's wife, starts a business that makes her a millionaire.

Cast

• Lucille Ball as Jean Russell
• Patric Knowles as Denny Williams
• Donald Woods as Jeffrey Martin
• Frieda Inescort as Flora Barton-Williams
• Inez Courtney as Gwen Morrison
• Leona Maricle as Eve Harrington
• Frances Mercer as Patricia Wharton
• Whitney Bourne as Peggy Ponsby
• George Beranger as Cyril (as George Andre Beranger)
• Kay Sutton as Miss Whitman, Jean's Secretary
• Ann Evers as Lois Peabody

Reception

RKO's pre-release publicity claimed that the film was to be an "exposé of the beauty racket" but reviewers of the day concluded that it was a standard "romantic love triangle".^[1]

Leonard Maltin has written favorably of the film, suggesting that the film offered an unusual feminist viewpoint for its time, and acknowledging that Ball delivered a strong performance.^[2]

References

Bibliography

• Jewell, Richard B. and Harbin, Vernon, The RKO Story, Octopus Books, London, 1982. ISBN 0-7064-1285-0
• Maltin, Leonard, Leonard Maltin's 1998 Movie & Video Guide, Signet Books, 1997. ISBN 0-451-19288-5

External links

• Beauty for the Asking at IMDb
• Beauty for the Asking at the TCM Movie Database
• Beauty for the Asking at AllMovie
• Beauty for the Asking at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films