This feature was published in conjunction with Children of Divorce at ADoS 2025
Today, “American Venus” is connected with Louise Brooks, a supporting player in the 1926 comedy of the same name. But in its day the term was associated with the film’s top-billed star: Esther Ralston. A graceful, sunny blonde equally at home in romantic dramas or flapper flicks, Ralston was a major name in the 1920s and, at the top of her game, was commanding up to $8,000 a week.
A VAUDEVILLE CHILDHOOD
Born Esther Louise Worth in 1902 in Bar Harbor, Maine, Ralston was in show business by the time she could crawl. Her father Harry was a fitness instructor who gave demonstrations of strength by holding baby Esther and her brothers in a sheet suspended by a rubber mouthpiece. The popularity of this amusing feat led Harry to create a family vaudeville act. After hearing one too many puns about “how much is Harry Worth,” he decided to adopt a more dignified surname and, as the “Ralstons,” they toured every U.S. venue that would have them: vaudeville theaters, schools, carnivals, even insane asylums.
ON HER WAY AT LAST
Like many traveling performers looking for new opportunities, the Ralstons arrived in Hollywood in 1917, where they worked as extras at Universal. In her 1985 autobiography Someday We’ll Laugh, Ralston recalled her mesmerized young self watching Tod Browning directing a Priscilla Dean feature. Hoping for a startled reaction from Dean in a key shot, Browning discreetly asked the young Esther if she would scream when he touched her arm. The camera started cranking, and accordingly: “I let out a shriek that must have been heard for two blocks.” Ralston claimed this led to a bit part in Browning’s next picture. “I was on my way at last—you might even say I screamed my way into the movies!”
HOLLYWOOD DARLING
Ralston’s first significant film role as Mary Jane Wilks in William Desmond Taylor’s Huckleberry Finn (1920) was followed by appearances in crime dramas and Lois Weber features. She was a regular in westerns opposite stars like Hoot Gibson and Tom Mix, learning horseback riding on the fly, and her willingness to do her own stunts sometimes came with a price. During an Art Acord film, much of her hair was singed off when a scene atop a burning oil well went awry. Her career got a major boost when she was cast as Mrs. Darling in Herbert Brenon’s 1924 hit Peter Pan. The role resulted in a long-term contract with Paramount and her reliability on set earned her the affectionate nickname, “One Take Ralston.”
BECOMING VENUS
“Miss Ralston is my idea of the way a movie actress should be and look,” wrote Ethel Sands for Picture-Play magazine in 1925, “witty and intelligent, without any affectations, and smart and chic without being artificial.” With her graceful beauty, Ralston proved ideal for wholesome leads but she could also add a touch of spice to flapper characters. She acted in comedies opposite stars like Richard Dix and Ford Sterling and was Edward Everett Horton’s love interest in James Cruze’s lavishly-staged Beggar on Horseback (1925). When Florenz Ziegfeld announced the upcoming “bathing beauty” picture, The American Venus, Ralston was surprised to be handpicked for the lead. While it was an admittedly lightweight film, Photoplay declared that Ralston made it watchable: “[She is] so good-looking and full of pep that the romance of the story romps along at a very gratifying rate.”
A PERSONAL FAVORITE
Her fame as America’s Venus led to more prestigious pictures, including Frank Lloyd’s Children of Divorce with Clara Bow and Gary Cooper. Ralston later cited James Cruze’s Old Ironsides made in 1926 as a personal favorite. Based on the true story of the battleship U.S.S. Constitution, the film was shot off Catalina Island on refitted—and rickety—vintage ships. Ralston was the lone woman among the cast and found the production a real adventure. An attempt to film night scenes of a pirate attack was interrupted by a storm, and the cast’s ramshackle ship nearly sank before the Coast Guard came to the rescue. The dangers paid off, however, and the film opened to rave reviews, with Moving Picture World singling out its naval battles as “staggering in their magnitude and impressiveness … [they] mark a new record of screen achievement.
A LOST MASTERWORK
Much of Ralston’s silent work has vanished, one of the greatest losses being Josef von Sternberg’s The Case of Lena Smith (1929), which survives only as a four-minute fragment. Sternberg had Ralston in mind when he crafted the grim story of a peasant girl who has an illegitimate child with a cadet officer, and the now twenty-seven-year-old proved she could handle tragedy with depth and sincerity, including a shocking prison scene that calls for Lena to be brutally whipped by the prison matron. Despite Lena Smith’s critical praise, the new craze for talkies overshadowed the film and Ralston’s bright star began to dim.
A LONG FINAL ACT
Despite her extensive stage experience, Paramount refused to bump up Ralston’s contract price and she turned to freelancing in the early 1930s, acting in a couple British dramas opposite Conrad Veidt and Basil Rathbone. When she got seventh billing for Universal’s San Francisco Docks (1940), she retired from films at age thirty-eight. After her three marriages ended in divorce, Ralston found work in a department store to support herself and her three children. She never fully gave up the acting bug and regularly took roles in radio, television, and theater. To the end of her life, she expressed fondness for her memories of Hollywood, frequently watching classic films on cable to revisit “people I know.”