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Beauty for Sale

1933 film by Richard Boleslawski

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ4877938 ↗
Source-derived summary

Beauty for Sale is a 1933 American pre-Code film about the romantic entanglements of three beauty salon employees. Based on the 1933 novel Beauty by Faith Baldwin, it stars Madge Evans, Alice Brady, Otto Kruger and Una Merkel.

Plot

Small town woman Letty Lawson moves to New York City and lives in a boarding house run by Mrs. Merrick. Eventually she asks her friend and Mrs. Merrick's daughter, Carol, to get her a job at her workplace, an exclusive beauty salon owned by Madame Sonia Barton. Though both Carol and her brother Bill, who is in love with her, warn her that it is not a fit place for a young woman of good character, Letty insists she knows what she is getting into.

After proving herself, Letty is sent on a house call to attend to spoiled, scatterbrained, chatty Mrs. Sherwood. When she leaves, she discovers her hat has been chewed up by Mrs.

Editorial summary

“Beauty for Sale” enters the record as 1933 film by Richard Boleslawski. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Beauty, Sale and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1933—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1933-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Beauty, Sale and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Beauty for Sale” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Beauty, Sale and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4877938. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Beauty for Sale”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Beauty for Sale primary sources, Beauty for Sale archive and Beauty research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Beauty for Sale”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Beauty for Sale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.