splash  The American Venus is a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of a beauty pageant, namely the actual 1925 Miss America contest in Atlantic City. In the film, Brooks plays Miss Bayport, a beauty contestant and “mannequin” (then a term for a fashion model). The American Venus is the second film in which Brooks appeared, but the first for which she received screen credit. Brooks made something of a splash, and it was this film and her next, A Social Celebrity, which proved to be her “break-out” roles. (Incidentally, both The American Venus and A Social Celebrity were named one of Photoplay magazine’s “Six Best Films of the Month”– and the rest, as they say, is history.)

Notably, The American Venus was among the earlier films to feature Technicolor. Based on what can be gleamed from surviving records and reportage of the time,  there are three scenes in the film which utilize the process. One is of the boardwalk parade of beauty contestants at the Atlantic City beauty pageant, the second is of an artistic tableaux, and the last is a fashion revue.

The American Venus proved popular upon release. Rose Pelswick, writing in the New York Evening Journal, stated “Famous Players-Lasky tied up with the recent beauty contest, and the result is a bewildering succession of events that range from artistic tableaux to a Keystone comedy chase.” Though largely eye-candy, many fans and at least a few critics responded favorably to its scantily clad bathing beauties, elaborate tableaux and fashion show, as well as the film’s pioneering use of Technicolor. The critic for the Boston Herald wrote, “The scenes made at Atlantic City and during the prologue are artistically done in Technicolor. Comedy relief in abundance is furnished by a wild automobile chase replete with giggles and thrills. The picture on the whole is entertaining.”

All-in-all, The American Venus proved to be a popular if not a critical success, and it was widely reviewed. However, not all were pleased with this otherwise frothy comedy. Quinn Martin, writing in the New York World, called the film “A glittering piece of dramatic trash, as cheap a thing and still as expensive looking as anything I have seen from the Paramount studio…. It presents a raw and effortful desire to photograph scantily attired women without any sensible or appreciable tendency to tell a reasonably alive or plausible story. Any nervous high school boy might have done the plot and there isn’t a director in captivity who could not have told the cameraman when and where and how to shoot.”   

american venus composite 0
During a parade of beauty contestants, Louise Brooks (as Miss Bayport) gives the eye to Ford Sterling as Sterling (in the crowd) gives the eye to Brooks — in a surviving scene from The American Venus.


Harrison’s Reports, an industry trade journal, echoed the comments found in other publications: “The only striking feature about it is the technicolor scenes; they are extremely beautiful. But some of them will, no doubt, prove offensive to church going people, particularly in the small communities, because of the fact that women’s legs, backs, sides and abdomens as low as below the navel, are shown aplenty. Women in tights have been shown in his pictures by Mack Sennett, but he has never been so ‘raw’; at least he had the girls wear brassieres, whereas Jesse Lasky has his girls wear nothing under the bathing suits, with the result that the women’s outlines of their breasts are clearly seen. In places there isn’t even the thin cloth of the bathing suit to cover the flesh.” Likewise, the Washington Herald noted, “Many of the tinted scenes of the fashion review were very daring in their exposure of the Atlantic City bathing girls. Once scene especially drew forth gasps from the audience; whether from shock or admiration, we cannot say.” The New York Daily News put it succinctly, titling its review, “American Venus Has Small Plot — But Also Few Clothes.”

The American Venus even drew the notice of the future Pulitzer prize winning poet, Carl Sandburg, who was then reviewing films for the Chicago Daily News. Soon-to-be famous poet liked the film, calling it “a smart takeoff on our national custom,” meaning beauty contests. Sandburg added, “The tricks of the magician, who produces an amazing array of gowns worn by picked mannequins, employs the motion picture technique at what it can do most skillfully. Esther Ralston and Fay Lanphier are the feminine talent, also Edna Oliver and Louise Brooks.”

The film also found tongue-in-cheek favor with renown playwright Robert E. Sherwood. Writing in Life magazine, Sherwood call the film “The primmest bit of box-office bait ever cast into the sea of commercialism…. The American Venus is to cinematographic art what the tabloid newspaper is to journalism. It is designed to appeal to those charming people who fill out the coupons and enclose their dollars for ‘Twelve Beautiful Photographic Studies of Parisian Models in Nature’s Garb’. Not that it is the least bit immoral. On the contrary, it is flamingly virtuous and teeming with the highest principles of 100 per cent American go-gettery.”

The stars of the film, which was even called a “shape show” by some publications, were Esther Ralston, a renown beauty, and Fay Lanphier, the reigning Miss America. Ford Sterling, one of the original Keystone Kops, and Lawrence Gray, were in support. Louise Brooks, who had a smaller role and was billed fifth, was noticed and made something of a splash. Brooks was featured in the film’s promotion, on a lobby card and film poster, as well as in advertisements. She was also mentioned in reviews and singled out by a handful of critics. The female critic for the New York Evening Journal noted Brooks’ “distinct screen personality,” while the male critic for the New York World stated Brooks was “better looking than any of the other brunettes now acting in films.”

American Venus credits American Venus credits
Title card from a trailer Credits from a trailer

Despite criticisms, The American Venus proved popular, and continued to play in the United States for more than two and a half years — often as part of a double-bill or in second run houses — well into the spring and summer of 1928.

STORY SYNOPSIS:
“Mary Gray, whose father manufactures cold cream, is engaged to sappy Horace Niles, the son of Hugo Niles, the elder Gray’s most competitive rival in the cosmetics business. Chip Armstrong, a hot-shot public relations man, quits the employ of Hugo Niles and goes to work for Gray, persuading Mary to enter the Miss America contest at Atlantic City, with the intention of using her to endorse her father’s cold cream should she win. Mary breaks her engagement with Horace. When it appears that she will win the contest, Hugo lures her home on the pretext that her father is ill, and she misses tile contest. Chip and Mary return to Atlantic City, discovering that the new Miss America has told the world that she owes all her success to Gray’s cold cream. On this note, Chip and Mary decide to get married.”


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The-American-Venus poster

PRODUCTION HISTORY:
Production took place in the fall of 1925, beginning around August 24 and ending around November 10. The film was shot in part in early September at the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and later at Paramount’s Astoria Studios on Long Island (located at 3412 36th Street in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens), as well as on the Coney Island boardwalk, in Greenwich, Connecticut (in the vicinity of Round Hill and Banksville), and “near a swimming hole” in Ocala, Florida.

CAST:
Esther Ralston
 Mary Gray
Lawrence Gray
 Chip Armstrong
Ford Sterling
 Hugo Niles
Fay Lanphier
 Miss Alabama
Louise Brooks
 Miss Bayport
Edna May Oliver
 Mrs. Niles
Kenneth MacKenna
 Horace Niles
William B. Mack
 John Gray (Mary Gray’s husband)
George DeCarlton
 Sam Lorber
W.T. Benda
 Artist (as himself, Władysław T. Benda)
Ernest Torrence
 King Neptune
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
 Triton
Raymond Hatton
 unknown role (reportedly in an uncredited bit part)
Evelyn Louise Carmen
 Miss Seattle – 1925 contestant (uncredited)
Helen Corcoran
 Miss Newark – 1925 contestant (uncredited)
Adrienne Dore
 a model (uncredited)
June Elkin
 Miss Newark – 1925 contestant (uncredited), also as Fay Lanphier’s double
Peggy Fish
 a model (uncredited)
Edythe Flynn
 Miss San Francisco – 1925 contestant (uncredited)
Ethel Grossbeck
 Miss Bay Ridge – 1925 contestant (uncredited)
Harold Hendee
 a drunk (uncredited)
Edith Higgins
 Miss Bronx – 1925 contestant (uncredited)
Winifred Hunter
 a model (uncredited)
Nellie Kincaid
 Miss Birmingham – 1925 contestant (uncredited)
Jean Lorraine (Jean O’Rourke)
 a model (uncredited)
Dorothy Mathews
 a model (uncredited)
Vera Rosson
 a model with ill fitting stockings (uncredited)
Esslyn Speaker
 a model (uncredited)
Velma Zeigler
 a model (uncredited)

CREDITS:
Studio:
 Famous Players-Lasky Corporation
Distributor:
 Famous Players-Lasky Corporation
Producer:
 Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky
Director:
 Frank Tuttle
Assistant Director:
 Russell Matthews
Writing Credits:
 Townsend Martin (story), Frederick Stowers (screenplay), Robert Benchley (titles, uncredited)
Cinematography:
 J. Roy Hunt
Color Photography:
 Ray Rennahan, W. Howard Greene (assistant), Joseph Biroc (assistant)
Art Direction:
 Frederick A. Foord
Production Design:
 Lawrence Hitt, Joe Mielziner (artistic tableaux)
Costumes:
 Gilbert Clark
Format:
 Silent – black & white, with Technicolor two-strip color process sequences
Running Time:
 8 reels (7,931 feet), reported as 92 to 113 minutes – elsewhere, Austria: 2450 meters, or 8038 feet, in 8 acts. Sweden: 2344 meters, or 85 minutes. United Kingdom: 7,000 and 7,821 feet.
Copyright:
 January 25, 1926 by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (LP22325)
Release Date:
 January 31, 1926
Premiere:
 January 11, 1926 (Stanley Theater, Atlantic City, NJ) see trivia note below
Opening:
 January 24, 1926 (Rivoli Theater, NYC)
Country of Origin:
 United States

ALTERNATE TITLES:
Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Bermuda, British Malaysia (Singapore), Canada*, China, Dutch Guiana (Surinam), India **, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, New Zealand, Panama, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). In the United States, the film was presented under the title La Venus Americana (Spanish-language press) and A Venus Americana (Portuguese-language press).

Elsewhere, The American Venus was shown under the title Vénus moderne (Algeria); Die Amerikanische Venus (Austria); A Venus Americana and La Venus Americana (Brazil); La Venus Americana (Chile); La Venus Americana (Cuba); Americká Venuše (Czechoslovakia) and Die amerikanische Venus (Czechoslovakia, German language); Den amerikanske venus (Denmark); La Venus Americana (Dominican Republic); De Moderne Venus (Dutch East Indies – Indonesia); Vénus moderne (Egypt); The Modern Venus (England); Miehen ihanne (Finland); Vénus moderne and Vénus américaine (France); Die Schönste Frau der Staaten (Germany); Az amerikai Vénusz (Hungary); Il trionfo di Venere and Trionfo di Venere (Italy); 美女競艶 or Bijo dai Kei tsuya  (Japan); Venus Moderne–Die Modern Venus (Luxembourg); La Venus americana (Mexico); De Moderne Venus (Netherlands);  Amerykan’ska Wenus and Venus Pokutujaca (Poland); A Vénus American (Portugal); Miss Amerika (Slovenia); Американская Венера (Soviet Union); La Venus americana and La Venus Moderna (Spain); Mannens ideal and Mannens ideal–Venus på amerikanska (Sweden ***); and La Venus moderne (Switzerland).

* The film was banned in the province of Quebec (Canada) due to “nudities.”
** Bengali censorship records from 1927 called for the elimination of close-ups of women in the film’s tableaux, noting “The figures are too naked for public exhibition.”
*** In Sweden, the film was restricted to those over 15 years old

STATUS:
The film is lost, though a few minutes of material was found in Australia in the late 1990’s. The surviving material includes fragments, variously in black and white, tinted and in Technicolor, from two theatrical trailers, as well as fragments from the film itself. Cumulatively, this surviving material — some of which repeats — runs less than 8 minutes. The footage from the film includes a brief scene depicting Louise Brooks standing on a float in a passing parade, interior scenes involving Brooks and Ford Sterling and another woman, an outdoor chase scene involving an automobile, and a technicolor sequence of a fashion show. These surviving trailers, each about 180 feet in length, are housed at the Library of Congress and at the Pacific Film Archive. The two trailers were screened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2002, and can be found on the DVD box set, More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894 – 1931. In 2018, the BFI announced they had found a three second piece of Technicolor stock from the film which depicts Louise Brooks. Most all of this material was restored in 2025. In January of 2026, the surviving fragments of this film (totaling 8 minutes) and three others were released on Blu-ray by Flicker Alley under the title, Louise Brooks in Focus.

RELATED ONLINE DOCUMENTS, MEDIA, LINKS, etc…:
Press Sheet (Library of Congress)
— Paramount, 1926
Thematic music cue sheet (George Eastman House)
— Paramount, 1926
Coming Attraction Slide (Louise Brooks Society)
— scroll down for a particular film
Kansas Board of Review Movie Index (Kansas Historical Society)
— censorship record: “Eliminations: Reel 7 – Elim scene of a man in car drinking out of bottle.”
Venus Americana (Banco de Conteudos Culturais)
— Brazilian movie herald
“Louise Brooks and The American Venus” by Thomas Gladysz (Starts Thursday)
— 2011 blog post
“The American Venus” by J.B. Kaufman (Movie of the Month)
— 2016 blog post
“Louise Brooks and a lost technicolor tableau from The American Venus” by Thomas Gladysz (Louise Brooks Society blog)
— 2026 blog post
Focus on Louise Brooks (Flicker Alley)
— 2026 Blu-ray release of the surviving fragments

TRIVIA: about the film

— More than a little controversy surrounded the 1925 Atlantic City beauty pageant. Two contestants made news when they withdrew in protest, claiming that other entrants (notably Miss Manhattan – Brooks’ friend and Follies star Dorothy Knapp) were “professional beauties,” and that the contest was “being run as a publicity stunt for a national film-producing organization.” (Frank Tuttle, director of The American Venus, was one of the pageant judges.) Miss Pittsburgh also withdrew claiming she “had been forced to sign a contract in which she agreed to appear in a motion picture.” Speculation about the contest continued to circulate for weeks. After the New York Evening Graphic published an expose claiming the contest was fixed, Atlantic City officials filed a $3,000,000 libel suit. [Looking back in 1940, Hedda Hopper wrote “That was the year Paramount pulled a fast one and Fay Lanphier won the Miss America title. A Frank Tuttle movie about beauty pageants, starring Fay, was released about four minutes later. I was down there in Atlantic City for the Graphic . . . .”]

— The week long event was widely reported on, and was even covered on the radio, then a very new medium. The selection of Miss America and the crowning of the American Venus was broadcast around the country via radio station WPG in Atlantic City.

— Joe Mielziner, who designed the film’s artistic tableaux, was the brother of actor Kenneth MacKenna, who played Horace Niles in The American Venus

— The American Venus was previewed at the Bellevue Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey on December 11, 1925, as reported in the local newspaper, the Montclair Times. (Preview screening were held in order to assess audience reaction to a film, and as such, the title to be previewed was not announced in advance.) The film was privately screened at the Atlantic City Ambassador Hotel as a benefit under the auspices of the Atlantic City Shrine Club on December 26, 1925. A benefit screening of the film also took place at midnight on December 31, 1925 at the American Theater in Oakland, California — the hometown of star Fay Lanphier. Originally, the reigning Miss America was set to attend the benefit, but at the last minute she was named Rose Bowl Queen and was rushed off to Pasadena. [To date, Lanphier is the only women to be both Miss America and Rose Bowl Queen.)

— Lanphier enjoyed considerable fame after winning the Miss America contest; she wrote articles and made personal appearances around the country – many in conjunction with the screening of The American Venus. Her movie career, however, never developed. Lanphier appeared in only one other film, a Laurel and Hardy short titled Flying Elephants (1928). Later, the honey-blond beauty worked as a stenographer in Hollywood.

— Miss Bayport, the role played by Louise Brooks, was originally assigned to Olive Ann Alcorn, a stage and film actress who had bit parts in Sunnyside (1919) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

— Townsend Martin, whose story served as the basis for the film, was a college friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald. According to the New Yorker and other publications, famed humorist Robert Benchley wrote the film’s titles.

— According to the 1999 book, Russian Writings on Hollywood, author Ayn Rand reported seeing The American Venus in Chicago, Illinois not long after she left the Soviet Union and arrived in the United States.

— In March of 1926, one reel of The American Venus was destroyed when a fire broke out in the projection booth as the film was being screened at a matinee in York, Nebraska. The local York Daily News-Times reported the film had just “reached an interesting part.” The newspaper went on to report, “A telephone call to Omaha was placed by the management and with twenty minutes before train time the Omaha branch shipped a substitute reel to York in time for the evening show.”