The American Venus
Paramount staged beauty contests and early Technicolor spectacle around Miss America; only seconds of Louise Brooks now move on film.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A formally released silent comedy and beauty-pageant spectacle directed by Frank Tuttle.
A cosmetics-company rivalry and romance were built around pageant performers, fashion and colour sequences.
Existence timeline
Paramount places the spectacle in its coming slate.
Regional pageants help cast participants.
Colour is used for parts of the visual display.
The feature reaches paying audiences.
The full comedy becomes a lost film.
BFI footage reveals three surviving seconds of Louise Brooks.
Why it ended
The full feature disappeared; only a few seconds of colour footage are known to survive at the BFI.
Last confirmed trace
The BFI fragment, trailer material, stills, programmes and AFI records preserve pieces of the spectacle.
What it left behind
Its three-second colour image of Louise Brooks is the only known colour moving footage of the actress.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.