Full page view 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. (AFI Catalog)
The American Venus was produced by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and premiered in New York on 24 January 1926. The film was released in eight reels (7,931 ft. / 2,417 m.).
The black and white feature included color sequences using the Technicolor II two-color process. This collection presents all of the motion picture material related to the film known to survive:
• Three variations of the original trailer, two from Library of Congress and one courtesy of the Jon Mirsalis Collection.
• A Technicolor segment from the collection of the Pacific Film Archive.
• A brief Technicolor test from the collection of the BFI.
All of the sources were scanned and restored at 4K resolution. Digital image intervention was limited to dust and scratch removal and judiciously remediating damage to individual frames. The Technicolor sequences accurately represent the colors of the materials as they appear today. These restorations were completed in August 2025 by the San Francisco Film Preserve in conjunction with BFI, Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, the Jon Mirsalis Collection, and the Pacific Film Archive.
