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| Miss America 1984 |
But I’d rather look back.
Because as you’d expect with any woman who runs off to Las Vegas, Miss America has a past.
Indeed, the pageant’s been around for 92 years. That’s long enough for winners to go from Norma and Henrietta to Mallory and Caressa.
And except for her six-year fling with Nevada, Miss America’s spent all of her time in Atlantic City — a spot that spawns scandals, shenanigans and surprises.
So, while reading the pageant’s online history, I wasn’t shocked that a winner sparked controversy with her nude image.
But I was taken aback that this involved Miss America 1935, a dime-store clerk from Pittsburgh who swore she wore a swimsuit when she posed for a sculptor.
(I know, you were probably thinking of Vanessa Williams, Miss America 1984, who turned in her tiara after sexually explicit photos surfaced from her past. Oddly, the online history doesn’t dish dirt on Williams — although it does note her term was completed by “Miss America 1984 B.”)
Here’s another oddity: The first Miss America never competed for the title.
Instead, high school student Margaret Gorman went to Atlantic City in 1921 as Miss Washington, D.C. She then won the amateur division of the first-ever Inter-City Beauty Contest.
The “professional” title went to silent film actress Virginia Lee. If I remember correctly, her reaction was, “ ! ”
When Gorman returned the next year, pageant officials gave her a new identity. “Since both titles she won in 1921 were a little awkward — Inter-City Beauty, Amateur, and The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America — it was decided to call her ‘Miss America.’ ”
Those early years had overtones that sound almost political.
Consider Mary Katherine Campbell, an Ohio woman who won the title in 1922 and 1923.
She nearly took the trifecta in 1924, but judges chose another beauty queen “after hours of deliberation.”
When the 1925 contest rolled around, the pageant had imposed a single-term limit.Another rule change came when Jacque Mercer, Miss America 1949, married during her reign.
It went badly — and Mercer lobbied successfully for a rule that bars Miss America from walking down the aisle in the year after she strolls down the runway.
And pageants in the past weren’t always like the smooth-running spectacles you see on TV.
The 1933 contest, won by 15-year-old Marian Bergeron of Connecticut, sounds like a sitcom.
“There was so much confusion during and after the vote tabulations that nobody informed Marian she had won,” says the online account. The teen only learned she was Miss America when someone put the banner on her.
Nerves definitely got the better of the newly crowned Miss America 1937, who fled in a motorboat with her chaperone.
“The two floated around Atlantic City until the boardwalk crowds dispersed,” says the pageant’s account.
And of course, contestants have given us great quotes over the decades.
Judges asked Patricia Donnelly what she would do if she became Miss America 1939. “I’d drop dead,” the Detroit woman answered.
Apparently, the judges took that as a dare. They gave the title to Donnelly — and she survived.
My favorite comment came from the father of Evelyn Ay, a 1954 contestant from Pennsylvania. He watched his daughter compete in the Miss America contest, then actually become Miss America.
“This,” the proud dad declared, “could happen only in America.
