Louise Brooks and a lost technicolor tableau from The American Venus

Back in 2018, a three second fragment of technicolor film featuring Louise Brooks was discovered at the BFI (British Film Institute) National Archive. The all-to-brief piece is from The American Venus (1926),  Brooks' second film though her first credited role. 

The American Venus was one of the earlier examples of the use of Technicolor. In fact, the use of Technicolor in the Frank Tuttle-directed film was considerable, as there are at least three scenes -- according to reportage from the time -- which utilize the process. One is the boardwalk parade of beauty contestants at the Atlantic City beauty pageant, the second is of a series of artistic tableaux, and the last is of a fashion revue. 

In all likelihood, the three second fragment comes from one of the tableau, which does not survive. Here is a screen grab from that three-second fragment.

In The American Venus, Brooks plays Miss Bayport, a beauty contestant and "mannequin" (then a term for a fashion model). The film includes at least one tableau, which were a kind of still-life staging of a scene.  The three second fragment is certainly from a staged scene in which models held their pose --  notice the dark pole at Brooks' feet, which was used to position and steady the actress.

That tableau was pictured in the June, 1926 issue of Film Fun magazine. The window grate seen in the clipping below matches the grate seen in the video fragment. I wonder if the faint figure behind the left window grate shown below might be Louise Brooks? As in the video fragment, this figure is also standing on a raised platform.

Film Fun was a humor-focused movie magazine, and the caption to the image below read "Lady in the left window: I wonder why Helen of troy had such a reputation for beauty. Lady in the right window: Why, that's easy to see. She got all her clothes from Paris."

At the time of the film's release, both newspapers and local censorship boards noted the skimpy outfits worn by many of the women in the film. To our eyes today, this is pretty tame stuff. But back then, such skimpy outfits -- like the one Brooks is seen wearing in the video fragment, amounted to nudity. (The term "nudity" was in fact used in a few critiques of the film.) As is evident in the above clip, Brooks' belly button and midriff are clearly visible. At the time, such exposure pushed the boundaries of decorum.

The American Venus was a big success, and was widely reviewed. 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.” However, 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.”  

Soon-to-be famous poet Carl Sandburg liked it, calling the film a "a smart takeoff on our national custom," meaning beauty contests. The film also found favor with 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 still below from The American Venus, another posed scene with very little movement, features a small group of models wearing what appear to flesh-colored body stockings. (Louise Brooks is not among them.) On first glance, they appear "nude" -- which suggest why some called the film a "shape show". There were also reports from the time of audiences gasping at what they perceived to be nudity, or near nudity. Consequently, there were calls for censorship from Chicago to Canada and India and beyond. The film was banned in the province of Quebec due to “nudities.” While 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.”

Another tableau in The American Venus (and which likewise does not survive) was made into a still and later featured on a German postcard. In Germany, the film was titled Die Schönste Frau der Staaten. And, BTW, that is Louise Brooks seated front and center.

One other tableau-like fashion show can be seen in the surviving footage from The American Venus on the soon-to-be-released Blu-ray, Focus on Louise Brooks, from Flicker Alley. This same staged scene is also pictured on one of the film's jumbo lobby cards, which is shown below. (My apologies about the poor quality, but this is the best I have.) Louise Brooks makes an appearance in this scene, slapping the MC.

More about The American Venus can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on its The American Venus (filmography page). 

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original content copyright © 2026. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.