June 4, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for over 100 years, the Miss America pageant has been a fixture of American culture, shaping ideas of beauty, femininity, and patriotism. But staying relevant hasn’t been easy. Amy Argetsinger, author of There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America, shares the surprising origins, cultural impact, and evolution of the iconic competition.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. The Miss America Pageant has been around for
over a century, but through these many years, the pageant
(00:30):
has had to conquer a seemingly endless battle time and
again to stay accepted and to stay current. Up next,
you'll hear from Amy Argersinger, author of There She Was,
The Secret History of Miss America, telling us all about
this cultural icon that's been written into the American story
(00:50):
and the American heart. Here's Amy with a full, untold
story of Miss America from its beginnings, years of backlash,
and the events and winners who helped shape it along
the way.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
The Miss America Pageant, which they didn't even call the
Miss America Pageant the first year, started in nineteen twenty one.
There wasn't really any grand scheme here. It was just
a side show. Atlantic City wanted to keep the tourists
coming after Labor Day and they decided to have a great,
big fall frolic festival. They had dancing they had parades,
(01:30):
and one of the publicity stunts to get people from
other cities to come to this was having a beauty contest.
Their trick was to get a bunch of cities, newspapers
and cities that were essentially a train ride away to
send their most beautiful girls, and these newspapers in different
(01:52):
cities Pittsburgh, Camden, Washington, d C. Philadelphia, they would have
their most Beautiful Girl contests where people would vote, judges
would decide which girl who had sent their photo in
was most beautiful and send her to Atlantic City. There
had been beauty pageants before. It was, you know, the
(02:12):
kind of thing you might see at the seashore, but
the idea of having women who were representing different cities
that was a totally new idea. And also the other
new part was that they were in swimsuits. So what
started out to be a great, big community festival a
big tourist event. The thing that got all the attention
(02:33):
that year was the beauty pageant. Regional newspapers covered it
very closely and it was a huge hit. The winner
that year was a very young woman named Margaret Gorman,
who was Miss Washington, DC. She was the youngest woman
in the competition. She looked like Mary Pickford, who was
the big silent movie star at the time. She had long,
(02:53):
golden curls. This was at a time when, you know,
it was the flapper era. A lot of young women
were bob their hair and there was a lot of
anxiety about change and modernity, and the people in Atlantic
City they loved the fact that this was an old
fashioned girl. So there really wasn't a mission that first year.
(03:15):
It was just a tourist trap. It was just a gimmick.
But they kind of started to fumble their way to
their mission that first year when everyone gravitated to this young,
seemingly very innocent, naive, unspoiled girl, and that became kind
of the ethos that pervaded Miss America, that it was
(03:37):
all about being wholesome and good and filled with merit,
not just pretty, though pretty, of course was a big
part of it.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Miss America was a little.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Controversial in its early years. It actually got shut down
in the late twenties after several very successful years because
the business owners of Atlantic City thought it was just
a little bit sleazy. They didn't like this whole idea
of these young women putting themselves in the spotlight trying
(04:07):
to get publicity. So for Miss America to survive, it
had to kind of conform to a certain notion of
wholesomeness and respectability. There was a new director, a woman
named Leonora Slaughter, who was a very proper Southern lady
(04:29):
from Florida who came up to run the pageant, and
she basically wanted to clean up its image. And she
did this by getting local church women to be chaperones,
by establishing all of these rules of behavior, like you
couldn't be alone with a man, you know, you had
to have a curfew. And she also connected the pageant
(04:53):
with the local Junior Chambers of Commerce, which later became
known as the j c's, which were these very wholesome,
small town organizations filled with you know, pillar of the
community type young men. She basically got these organizations to
run the local pageants and the state pageants that led
(05:14):
to Miss America. Before that, you know, sometimes it would
just be kind of like these fly by nights, leezy
carnival operators that might be running you know, Miss New
Jersey or something. She got rid of all that, she
cleaned it up. She kind of you know put white
gloves on the whole organization and presented everyone as very
respectable and subscribing to very small town, middle class virtues.
(05:41):
And by the time the nineteen fifties rolled around, it
had very much fallen in line. The entire organization. It
was college women by and large. They had attached themselves
to scholarships. They had promoted these ideas that it wasn't
just about having a great swimsuit body, it was about
winning a college scholarship. They had added interviews and they
(06:01):
had added talent competitions to it, so that it wasn't
just about young women in their bathing suits. It became
a big brand name pretty quickly in the twenties and thirties,
but it wasn't until nineteen fifty four that they put
it on television, and that is when Miss America really
took off. That was the dawn of television. Of course,
(06:25):
all the networks were looking for ways to lock in
all the local channels that were attaching to their syndicates,
and they wanted to have like a lot of really
exciting live programming. They hadn't quite realized that, you know,
sitcoms are fine, reruns are great, Like it was all
about having something that was live and spectacular. Miss America
(06:47):
organization actually resisted this for a couple of years because
they worried that if the pageant was on TV, well,
they'd lose all of the ticket revenue from the people
in Philadelphia who would just stay at home to watch
it instead of coming on down to the convention hall.
So ABC, which was their first network home, had to
(07:08):
really convince them it's like, Okay, we're going to give
you a really good sponsorship deal. And so they finally
agreed to do it, and it was an immediate sensation.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And you've been listening to Amy Argetsinger telling the story
of Miss America and when we come back, more of
this American icon, this American brand here on our American Stories.
Here are in our American Stories. We bring you inspiring
stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from
a great and beautiful country that need to be told
(07:40):
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If you love our stories in America like we do,
please go to our American Stories dot com and click
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us keep the great American Stories coming. That's our American
Stories dot Com and we're back with our American Stories
(08:12):
and the story of the Miss America pageant. Amy Argensinger
had just shared with us the story of the pageant's
early years, its success, its failures, and ultimately its reboot
and rebranding, something the organization would find itself doing on
a number of occasions. When we last left off, Amy
was talking about the first year that the pageant aired
(08:33):
on live television in nineteen fifty four and the immediate
sensation that rose from that. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Something like twenty seven million people watched Lee Merriweather Miss California,
the crown Miss America that year, and her fame instantly
exceeded that of any of the previous Miss America. She
was the nineteen year old Miss California, and she almost
didn't compete because her father died about a month before
(09:11):
the competition. He had been the one very supportive dad.
He had encouraged her to enter the Locals San Francisco pageant,
and then he was there to watch her win Miss California,
and then he died very suddenly of a stroke. So
when Lee was crowned Miss America. Back then, she had
never seen a Miss America pageant, so she didn't really
(09:32):
know what was happening. So when they put the sash
on her and she realized that this meant she was
the winner, she looks up and she starts crying, and
she says, I hope Daddy knows. I hope Daddy can see.
I hope he's proud, and she starts crying. Here's the thing.
Lee had no idea she was on television at that moment.
(09:52):
This is the first year the show was on TV,
but the cameras were really discreet.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
But it's all live on TV and.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
She's crying, and then her mother comes on and tells
her stop your snibblingly and she's still crying, and it's
all aired on TV live, and people lost their minds
because it was so raw, it was so emotional, it
was so real. They'd never seen anything like this. This
(10:22):
was one of the biggest shows on television. It was
the Oscars, the Super Bowl, which didn't even come along
for another decade, and Miss America. And into the sixties
and seventies, those were often the three biggest shows of
the entire year, and that's when people all of a
sudden could understand what this was. They got caught up
(10:43):
in the competition, and in a lot of ways, it
was the first reality TV. Here, it was this drama
of a young woman being catapulted to fame. Now that
became the actual text, the actual drama of the show
that people were watching live on television across the country
(11:04):
and became truly a popular culture phenomenon, just watched by
millions of people. It was appointment television. It had suddenly
reached this level of respectability and very much talked about
as upstanding young women. And that continued for I'd say
a good fifteen years after it was on television. But
(11:26):
in the seventies there was kind of a creeping cynicism
about Miss America. So in nineteen sixty eight there was
an organization called New York Radical Women. These were women
who had been part of a lot of the protest
movements of the day. They had been marching for civil rights,
(11:48):
they had been marching against the Vietnam War. But they
found themselves being very marginalized within these movements by men.
They were the ones who were often doing a lot
of the hard work of the organizing, but it was
the men who.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Got all the credit.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
And they got radicalized by this, as the title would
tell you, and they decided that they would take these
skills and lead this own push for women's rights, for
women's liberation, as the praise was then, and they knew
they had to make a splash. And at that time
Miss America was one of the biggest events of the year,
(12:28):
one of the biggest TV shows, and they decided that
the pageant in September of nineteen sixty eight would be
a fantastic place to launch a protest. They descended on
Atlantic City and they had signs you know, no more
Miss America, or up against the wall Bert Parks referring
(12:51):
to the longtime MC. They had a sheep wearing a
Beauty Pageant sash. They might have even, you know, had
like an effigy of Miss America.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
It was it was a real spectacle.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It stole all the attention from poor little Judy Ford,
miss Illinois, the woman who who won the.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Pageant that year.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
She had this spectacular boufont that stayed in its place
while she was doing her trampoline act. But the protests
stole all the attention and it was the first time
anyone had raised questions, first time anyone had really said,
what are you doing here? You're parading these young women
in their swimsuits like some kind of cattle auction. You
(13:32):
also just had a more creeping cynicism within journalism in
the nineteen seventies. There'd be sort of a raised eyebrow
like what is this really about? A sense of mockery,
and again the enduring question like what are these women
doing here?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
What is this about?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
You know, is there being objectified? And it led to
a lot of soul searching within the Miss America organization,
and for the most part, the women's movement moved on.
They had made their point, they had put themselves on
the map, and they had bigger targets to go after
following that. But it really was a blow. It was
(14:09):
a wound for miss America. They really felt threatened by this.
It was the first time anyone had raised questions about
the meaning of their institution, and it led to a
long period of soul searching and angst about what they
should do and how they should react to this movement
and how they should change to suit a new generation.
(14:31):
Through the sixties, this was really a competition for eighteen
year olds nineteen year olds. But one impact, indirect impact
of the women's movement is that you had these competitors
who were feeling a little more empowered and they were
more competitive, and they would keep competing, you know, even
(14:55):
after they were eighteen or nineteen. They would come back
the next year and try and try again. And so
you had this generation of older, more mature, more confident
Miss Americas. And they were interesting women who had stuff
to say, and they ended up kind of keeping the
attention of the media. Even if there was an undercurrent
(15:18):
of skepticism about pageants, the pageants still got a lot
of news coverage. People were very interested in the outcome,
and every time you had a new Miss America, there
is this sense of, well, here's our new ideal. What
does she tell us about young womanhood. In nineteen seventy
three or in nineteen seventy eight, the pageant remained huge.
(15:43):
It was still a big, big TV show, this big
annual event. Deep into the nineteen seventies, the networks would
fight over who had the rights to broadcast it, and
they would, you know, throw millions of dollars at the pageant.
It was an incredibly lucid of endeavor, and pageant culture continued.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
To be to be huge.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And you've been listening to Amy Argetsinger tell the story
of Miss America, and in the end, it's a story
about American history, about American cultural history, and how the
pageant changed, because in the end, America changed, but boy,
it didn't change fast. And though there were these big
riots and protests in sixty eight, it was still a
coveted piece of live programming by network television well into
(16:35):
the seventies. And what's so interesting is how this started.
You know, if you're a Jersey shore person or you're
no Long Island or the Northern Beaches pretty much beaches
and ends at Labor Day. And so what does Atlantic
City do. It comes up with an idea to bring
people back in late September, and it's just entrepreneurs trying
to figure out the next thing. And ultimately, because it
(16:57):
seems a little sleazy just parading girls around es, well,
they bring in the church ladies. They bring in all
kinds of folks to make it a more palatable project
and a more palatable piece of programming for mainstream America.
Which happened, and it did very well in the twenties
and thirties, but then came TV, and then came nineteen
(17:17):
fifty four and twenty seven million people watched Lee Merriweather
yet crowned Miss America. When we come back, more of
this remarkable story how Miss America came to be, how
it survived deep cultural changes. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we're back with our American stories and the story
of the cultural icon. It's been around for over a century,
the Miss America pageant. Here's Amy Argetsinger to continue with
the story of Miss America, some of the past winners
and the ways in which they changed the entire view
of the pageant.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Phyllis George was crowned in nineteen seventy and Phyllis was
a game changer, not just for Miss America but for
women in general. Is she was a Texas beauty queen,
just kind of you know, a typical All American girl, cheerleader,
played piano, wanted to be a teacher. But she just
(18:52):
had this big personality. I mean, she was also great looking,
she was also talented, but she had this really dazzling personality.
You know, a lot of Miss Americas in that era,
they would get to the end of their year and
they'd be ready to go back home to finish college,
(19:13):
to get married, whatever, and kind of go back into
quiet lives. Phillis, though, got a taste of ambition and
celebrity during her years Miss America and decided that she
wanted more than what her plan had been, so, you know,
she went to New York. The funny thing about her, though,
(19:35):
is that Phyllis wasn't an actress. She wasn't a singer,
though she could you know, handle a tune fine enough.
Her talent had been piano, but you know, let's face it,
she wasn't going to be a concert pianist, so she
was just trying to make it as something in New York.
She was doing a lot of TV commercials and trying
out for sitcoms when she ended up going out to
(19:58):
meet the president of CBS Sports. What was happening at
the time was that CBS Sports was trying to catch
up with ABC Sports, which had been doing some really
thrilling work wide world of sports, doing all this dramatic
stuff with the Olympics. CBS wanted to catch up and
(20:20):
they're thinking, well, how do we do this? And they're
realizing the missing element was women, both in terms of
who was on TV and who the viewers were. And
this one executive thought, I want to have a woman
in the announcer's box. And you know, he had tried
with one other woman who was a serious sports journalist,
(20:40):
and it didn't really work out. There was a lot
of backlash, and he ended up meeting Phyllis and they
talked for thirty minutes and he's just making chit chat
with her.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
He's like, so, do you know much about sports?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
And Phyllis says, well, I've dated a lot of athletes,
but she's so she was so charming and so funny
and could keep a conversation going after thirty minutes. The
officer or a job, and so she ends up being
a sports commentator and very successful, very quickly. She had
(21:14):
these incredible communication skills, some of which she learned from
being Miss America, some of which had helped her win
Miss America. And she would end up doing these softer
side stories, you know, profiles of athletes, talking to them
at their homes, finding out about their hobbies. We're all
really used to that kind of stuff now, but that
was really new and fresh and different at the time,
(21:36):
So she ended up being a real glass ceiling breaker
in sports broadcasting for women. She was the first to
really have success there. You know, she was on a
regular show that was a huge hit called NFL Today.
She was the first woman to do commentary during the
Super Bowl. It was just this incredible skyrocketing career and
(21:58):
I think a lot of the guys who watched her
head no idea she had even been Miss America, but
that had been very much her launching pad and the
thing that led her to try to reach for greater ambitions.
And you also saw that other Miss America's, other women
going into pageants, began to see that as a career path.
There's always that question, like Miss America, what does it
(22:20):
even mean? You know, especially if you're not like an
actress or a singer.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
What does it mean? And what do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, Phyllis kind of found that path, and with Phyllis's success,
pageants in a way became kind of a training ground
for this kind of thing. And since then we've had
so many female broadcasters who came from the world of pageants.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Because yeah, walking around in.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
A swimsuit is part of it, but a lot of
it is being able to think on your feet, to
answer questions in front of a microphone, to keep a
line of conversation going. And this was a skill set
that was perfect in the pageant system through the sixties,
and even with Phyllis George, the media coverage was very light,
(23:09):
was very puffy. They basically wanted to know if the
new Miss America had any pets, if she had a boyfriend,
you know, what her beauty secrets were. And if anyone
ever tried to ask Miss America what she thought about politics,
that reporter would be shut down. One of them I
think it was Debbie Bryant. In about nineteen sixty five,
(23:32):
a reporter tried to ask about the fact that there
had never been any African American contestants and what did
she think about this. Leonora Slaughter, the head of the pageant,
dragged Debbie, the new Miss America, out of the room
and basically shouted at the reporters she shouldn't have to
answer questions like that, she's not the president. I mean,
(23:52):
it was just and they were all coached one way
or the other. Do not answer these questions. Just don't
go there, don't go where there's any controvert, you know,
because they were thinking, oh, what about the advertisers, what
about the volunteers. We don't want to offend anyone. And
suddenly you had these Miss Americas who had a certain maturity,
life experience, and big career goals. Lorie Lee Schaeffer kind
(24:18):
of the typical baby boom Miss America.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know, she wore her hair and a flip.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
She's made it clear that she did not believe in
marijuana or premarital sex. She was a big Nixon fan.
She said she had never owned a pair of blue jeans,
you know, kind of all the stereotypes you have of
a very prim, old fashioned beauty queen.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
She was a little bit older.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
She was the first Miss America in many years to
already have her college degree.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
She had been trying.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
For three or four years to become Miss Ohio. She
went into this with a lot more maturity, and when
the journalists started asking her these questions, she kind of thought,
this is really cool that they're interested in what I think.
Laurie insisted that she be allowed to answer these questions.
She had political views that she felt strongly about. She
(25:10):
had lived through campus protests. She was a member of
the Lady's auxilliary for ROTC. She had had unpleasant experiences
with campus protesters, so she had strong feelings that she
came by honestly, and she didn't want to say no comment.
She wanted to say what she thought about Vietnam, about
(25:33):
the troops, about Richard Nixon, and so she did, and
the press was fascinated, and they'd asked her more questions
and she would hold forth on this and she had
very nuanced views on some topics. You'd never had a
Miss America who talked that forthrightly. In later years, it
became a ritual where it was almost like a litmus test.
(25:56):
Every Miss America would get out, what do you think
about abortion? What do you think about marijuana? But that
wasn't always the case. Laurie made that happen, and it
was interesting for journalists because, you know, the baby.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Boom was in full flourish.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
It was a time when everyone is trying to figure
out what's up with the kids these days? What do
the young people want? And you have a Miss America who,
you know, theoretically she's been crowned to some kind of
ideal and so, okay, here she is. She's our representative
of young America. What does she think? And Laurie showed
(26:31):
that this was one way Miss America could be somewhat
useful by stepping up and answering these questions and playing
that role of youth ambassador.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And you've been listening to Amy arget Singer and her
book there she was. The secret History of Miss America
is what we're talking about, and that is the story
of how Miss America came to be and how it changed.
Phyllis George, we learned, changed everything. And anybody who is around,
any of you who are older, know what Phyllis George did.
And he broke the mold and became a sports broadcaster
(27:02):
at CBS, trying to compete with the machine run Aldridge
had built at ABC. And then comes Lorie Lee Schaeffer
and Miss America was allowed to have opinions about things
other than her favorite color. When we come back more
of this remarkable story how Miss America came to be,
how it changed, survived, and thrived here on our American stories,
(27:37):
and we're back with our American stories and with the
final portion of the story of the constant yet ever
changing Miss America pageant. Back to Amy Argersinger.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So in the late eighties, the head of the Miss
America organization was a man named Leonard Horne, who was
a trial attorney of all things. I mean, he came
to Miss America as a volunteer, like a lot of
Atlantic City people, and he became concerned that there wasn't
enough for Miss Americas to do. They were basically standing
(28:11):
around looking pretty at sponsors events. They were signing autographs
and drug stores and things like that on behalf of Gillette,
and he just thought it was kind of tawdry. And
as it happened, that was when a woman named Kaylani
ray Rafco was crowned Miss America in nineteen eighty seven.
(28:34):
Kaylannie had this spectacular talent of Tahitian dance, really dazzling,
but she.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Was also a very serious young woman.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
She was an oncology nurse who was getting a graduate degree,
but she was already working as a nurse, and she
had a lot of interesting life experience and she felt
very strongly about the importance.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Of bringing more people into the nursing profession.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
So when she was Miss America, she was going around,
she was talking to Charity galas she was signing signatures
and drug stores and appearing at fashion shows and all that,
but she was also scheduling time to go into schools
and give them speeches about the importance of nursing careers. Well,
(29:23):
the media loved this. It was like incredibly interesting and
unexpected and different. Leonard Horne, the director of Miss America, thought.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
This is amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
This is really elevating Miss America. This is giving us
more of a sense of mission, and so he decided
to make that a formal part of what Miss Americas
would do. So a couple of years later he set
a new rule that they would have to have a cause,
a platform, and going into the nineties, this really did
(29:54):
do a lot for Miss America.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I think it kind of gave it a new lease
on life.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
It gave a bit of respectability. You had contestants who
were talking about homelessness, they were talking about education, they
were talking about AIDS, they were talking about all kinds
of issues. And there are a number of advocacy organizations
that were truly excited about this. Nicole Johnson, who actually
(30:20):
had diabetes and had to wear a diabetes pump during competition,
she ended up partnering with groups like JDRF who were
very excited to have this kind of spokesperson for their cause.
It lent Miss America a lot of dignity and a
lot of sense of mission. A lot of people always
(30:44):
loved the story of Heather white Stone, who was hard
of hearing, deaf Miss America, the first Miss America with
a disability. She was a young woman who socially had
trouble fitting in. She was typically going to mainstream schools
and because she couldn't hear, often just was not part
(31:09):
of the conversation.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
She always felt bad that people.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Would talk to her and she just didn't recognize and
so people thought she was aloof But she got into
pageants and that's where she found a lot of her
friendships and her sense of community. When she became Miss America,
her crowning was rather dramatic because she couldn't hear them
call her name. She had hearing aids, but they didn't
(31:36):
work so well in a situation like that. She could
read lips, but you know, it was Reis Philbin reading
the names and he was sort of standing behind her.
She had no idea that she was Miss America until
her first runner up basically looked her in the eyes
and said.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Hits you. And that's, you know, another kind.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Of great TV moment, and that was a high moment
from America's ratings in the nineties, you know, the pageant.
Of course, it's much smaller these days, but Miss America
kind of put itself up on this pedestal. So we
think about it in different terms and we talk about
its relevance, and I realized, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
It's like, there was a.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Time when like TV variety shows were a big deal,
and that was when Miss America was a big deal.
So how is it that Miss America even still exists.
There's like no other pop culture icon from the nineteen
twenties that is still a thing today except for Mickey Mouse.
It's Mickey Mouse and Miss America. And that's basically it.
(32:41):
You know, why did it last so long? I think
that's kind of the compelling thing about it. And I
really do think a lot of that is because of
the young women who competed and the young women who won.
Anytime there is any change in the organization to make
it more in it wasn't because of the producers or
(33:04):
the directors jazzing it up. And god knows they tried,
you know, changing the rules and having callin voters and
you know, saying that they had to be barefoot for
the swimsuit, or you know, adding the platforms. All of
this stuff was just window dressing. The thing that kept
people interested was the young women and how they evolved.
(33:26):
Whether it was you know, someone groundbreaking like Bess Myerson,
the first Jewish Miss America, or Vanessa Williams the first
African American Miss America, or in between, some Miss Americas
whose names people don't really know anymore, who were modern
or provocative, who pushed things forward Yolanda bett Bees who
(33:47):
refused to wear a swimsuit for the sponsors back in
nineteen fifty, or women like Lori Lee Schaeffer or Terrymuson
who were a little bit older and they were strident,
outgoing baby boomers who were willing to talk about politics
in the nineteen seventies, or women in the nineties like
(34:09):
Leanza Cornett and Kate Shindall who became AIDS activists. These
are the women who brought like texture and energy and
a dynamism to what was an inherently dated and strange format.
Miss Americas were changing because young women and our society
(34:31):
were changing, and that became a compelling narrative for us
in the viewing public to follow, and we did. You know,
I think the biggest surprise for a lot of people
is to realize the extent that it was a very
fervent culture and these women were competing over and over again.
(34:56):
And it wasn't just that they were competing year after year,
they were competing week after week. In some cases they
might compete at three or four local competitions. And what
you have happened there is even though it sounds a
little obsessive or weird, it's actually the formation of a community.
(35:21):
And meanwhile, they're returning again and again a competition, seeing
the same people time after time. And these are women
who they have something in common with, sure, their rivals,
but they're also colleagues in a way. I mean, it's
a great crazy scene of people who are all dressed up,
(35:43):
but they're also like carrying stadium cups of beer because
it's just this big convention center and they're waving signs
with their girls face on it and everything. But you know,
it's a sporting event and even while you think you're
there kind of to laugh at it you get caught
up in the competition, you get caught up in the
(36:04):
horse race. And I remember describing this to my uncle.
My uncle was a race car driver. He said to me,
I don't get it. I don't understand these women or
why they do this thing. And I explained to him, well,
you know, it's kind of either going for a personal best.
They're trying and trying. They like the sense of competition.
(36:28):
They go around on the circuit, they see the same people,
there's a familiarity.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And he looked at me. He said, oh, it's a sport.
I get it.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And I said, that's right, it's a sport. These women
they had this kind of very pragmatic attitude. They're they're
wearing sweats, they're pulling, you know, their roller bags that
are filled with makeup or whatever around and it's like
it's more like, you know, the half marathoning circuit or
like Master's swimming or something like that, except that they're
wearing you know, Mike eyelashes. It's just another sport and
(37:02):
its survival is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And a terrific job on the production by our own
Madison Derricott and a special thanks to Amy Argersinger. Author
of There she was the Secret History of Miss America.
And you can go to your local bookstore, go to Amazon,
or wherever you get your books. We love celebrating authors
by all means. Pick up the book. There's so much
more there. And we learn in that last segment that,
my goodness, there were some other game changers too. Hey
(37:28):
Lonnie ray Rafko, for instance, an oncology nurse who brought
in the idea that well, these winners can have causes,
and those causes go on to be aids and other charities,
and other political causes. Heather Whitestone, who was deaf and
didn't hear the call when Regis Philbin crowned her Miss America.
What a moment on Live TV. And what we learned
(37:49):
in the end is that this is a competition. It's
this spirit of sport. These girls go out on the circuit,
they get to know one another, the local circuit, the
state circuit, and in the end they have good fun
competing against one another and learning a lot about life
in the process. As Amy pointed out, no other pop
culture but Mickey Mouse is still around since the nineteen twenties.
(38:11):
The story of Miss America here on our American stories,
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. The Miss America Pageant has been around for
over a century, but through these many years, the pageant
(00:30):
has had to conquer a seemingly endless battle time and
again to stay accepted and to stay current. Up next,
you'll hear from Amy Argersinger, author of There She Was,
The Secret History of Miss America, telling us all about
this cultural icon that's been written into the American story
(00:50):
and the American heart. Here's Amy with a full, untold
story of Miss America from its beginnings, years of backlash,
and the events and winners who helped shape it along
the way.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
The Miss America Pageant, which they didn't even call the
Miss America Pageant the first year, started in nineteen twenty one.
There wasn't really any grand scheme here. It was just
a side show. Atlantic City wanted to keep the tourists
coming after Labor Day and they decided to have a great,
big fall frolic festival. They had dancing they had parades,
(01:30):
and one of the publicity stunts to get people from
other cities to come to this was having a beauty contest.
Their trick was to get a bunch of cities, newspapers
and cities that were essentially a train ride away to
send their most beautiful girls, and these newspapers in different
(01:52):
cities Pittsburgh, Camden, Washington, d C. Philadelphia, they would have
their most Beautiful Girl contests where people would vote, judges
would decide which girl who had sent their photo in
was most beautiful and send her to Atlantic City. There
had been beauty pageants before. It was, you know, the
(02:12):
kind of thing you might see at the seashore, but
the idea of having women who were representing different cities
that was a totally new idea. And also the other
new part was that they were in swimsuits. So what
started out to be a great, big community festival a
big tourist event. The thing that got all the attention
(02:33):
that year was the beauty pageant. Regional newspapers covered it
very closely and it was a huge hit. The winner
that year was a very young woman named Margaret Gorman,
who was Miss Washington, DC. She was the youngest woman
in the competition. She looked like Mary Pickford, who was
the big silent movie star at the time. She had long,
(02:53):
golden curls. This was at a time when, you know,
it was the flapper era. A lot of young women
were bob their hair and there was a lot of
anxiety about change and modernity, and the people in Atlantic
City they loved the fact that this was an old
fashioned girl. So there really wasn't a mission that first year.
(03:15):
It was just a tourist trap. It was just a gimmick.
But they kind of started to fumble their way to
their mission that first year when everyone gravitated to this young,
seemingly very innocent, naive, unspoiled girl, and that became kind
of the ethos that pervaded Miss America, that it was
(03:37):
all about being wholesome and good and filled with merit,
not just pretty, though pretty, of course was a big
part of it.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Miss America was a little.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Controversial in its early years. It actually got shut down
in the late twenties after several very successful years because
the business owners of Atlantic City thought it was just
a little bit sleazy. They didn't like this whole idea
of these young women putting themselves in the spotlight trying
(04:07):
to get publicity. So for Miss America to survive, it
had to kind of conform to a certain notion of
wholesomeness and respectability. There was a new director, a woman
named Leonora Slaughter, who was a very proper Southern lady
(04:29):
from Florida who came up to run the pageant, and
she basically wanted to clean up its image. And she
did this by getting local church women to be chaperones,
by establishing all of these rules of behavior, like you
couldn't be alone with a man, you know, you had
to have a curfew. And she also connected the pageant
(04:53):
with the local Junior Chambers of Commerce, which later became
known as the j c's, which were these very wholesome,
small town organizations filled with you know, pillar of the
community type young men. She basically got these organizations to
run the local pageants and the state pageants that led
(05:14):
to Miss America. Before that, you know, sometimes it would
just be kind of like these fly by nights, leezy
carnival operators that might be running you know, Miss New
Jersey or something. She got rid of all that, she
cleaned it up. She kind of you know put white
gloves on the whole organization and presented everyone as very
respectable and subscribing to very small town, middle class virtues.
(05:41):
And by the time the nineteen fifties rolled around, it
had very much fallen in line. The entire organization. It
was college women by and large. They had attached themselves
to scholarships. They had promoted these ideas that it wasn't
just about having a great swimsuit body, it was about
winning a college scholarship. They had added interviews and they
(06:01):
had added talent competitions to it, so that it wasn't
just about young women in their bathing suits. It became
a big brand name pretty quickly in the twenties and thirties,
but it wasn't until nineteen fifty four that they put
it on television, and that is when Miss America really
took off. That was the dawn of television. Of course,
(06:25):
all the networks were looking for ways to lock in
all the local channels that were attaching to their syndicates,
and they wanted to have like a lot of really
exciting live programming. They hadn't quite realized that, you know,
sitcoms are fine, reruns are great, Like it was all
about having something that was live and spectacular. Miss America
(06:47):
organization actually resisted this for a couple of years because
they worried that if the pageant was on TV, well,
they'd lose all of the ticket revenue from the people
in Philadelphia who would just stay at home to watch
it instead of coming on down to the convention hall.
So ABC, which was their first network home, had to
(07:08):
really convince them it's like, Okay, we're going to give
you a really good sponsorship deal. And so they finally
agreed to do it, and it was an immediate sensation.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And you've been listening to Amy Argetsinger telling the story
of Miss America and when we come back, more of
this American icon, this American brand here on our American Stories.
Here are in our American Stories. We bring you inspiring
stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from
a great and beautiful country that need to be told
(07:40):
that we can't do it without you. Our stories are
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love our stories in America like we do,
please go to our American Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help
us keep the great American Stories coming. That's our American
Stories dot Com and we're back with our American Stories
(08:12):
and the story of the Miss America pageant. Amy Argensinger
had just shared with us the story of the pageant's
early years, its success, its failures, and ultimately its reboot
and rebranding, something the organization would find itself doing on
a number of occasions. When we last left off, Amy
was talking about the first year that the pageant aired
(08:33):
on live television in nineteen fifty four and the immediate
sensation that rose from that. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Something like twenty seven million people watched Lee Merriweather Miss California,
the crown Miss America that year, and her fame instantly
exceeded that of any of the previous Miss America. She
was the nineteen year old Miss California, and she almost
didn't compete because her father died about a month before
(09:11):
the competition. He had been the one very supportive dad.
He had encouraged her to enter the Locals San Francisco pageant,
and then he was there to watch her win Miss California,
and then he died very suddenly of a stroke. So
when Lee was crowned Miss America. Back then, she had
never seen a Miss America pageant, so she didn't really
(09:32):
know what was happening. So when they put the sash
on her and she realized that this meant she was
the winner, she looks up and she starts crying, and
she says, I hope Daddy knows. I hope Daddy can see.
I hope he's proud, and she starts crying. Here's the thing.
Lee had no idea she was on television at that moment.
(09:52):
This is the first year the show was on TV,
but the cameras were really discreet.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
But it's all live on TV and.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
She's crying, and then her mother comes on and tells
her stop your snibblingly and she's still crying, and it's
all aired on TV live, and people lost their minds
because it was so raw, it was so emotional, it
was so real. They'd never seen anything like this. This
(10:22):
was one of the biggest shows on television. It was
the Oscars, the Super Bowl, which didn't even come along
for another decade, and Miss America. And into the sixties
and seventies, those were often the three biggest shows of
the entire year, and that's when people all of a
sudden could understand what this was. They got caught up
(10:43):
in the competition, and in a lot of ways, it
was the first reality TV. Here, it was this drama
of a young woman being catapulted to fame. Now that
became the actual text, the actual drama of the show
that people were watching live on television across the country
(11:04):
and became truly a popular culture phenomenon, just watched by
millions of people. It was appointment television. It had suddenly
reached this level of respectability and very much talked about
as upstanding young women. And that continued for I'd say
a good fifteen years after it was on television. But
(11:26):
in the seventies there was kind of a creeping cynicism
about Miss America. So in nineteen sixty eight there was
an organization called New York Radical Women. These were women
who had been part of a lot of the protest
movements of the day. They had been marching for civil rights,
(11:48):
they had been marching against the Vietnam War. But they
found themselves being very marginalized within these movements by men.
They were the ones who were often doing a lot
of the hard work of the organizing, but it was
the men who.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Got all the credit.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
And they got radicalized by this, as the title would
tell you, and they decided that they would take these
skills and lead this own push for women's rights, for
women's liberation, as the praise was then, and they knew
they had to make a splash. And at that time
Miss America was one of the biggest events of the year,
(12:28):
one of the biggest TV shows, and they decided that
the pageant in September of nineteen sixty eight would be
a fantastic place to launch a protest. They descended on
Atlantic City and they had signs you know, no more
Miss America, or up against the wall Bert Parks referring
(12:51):
to the longtime MC. They had a sheep wearing a
Beauty Pageant sash. They might have even, you know, had
like an effigy of Miss America.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
It was it was a real spectacle.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It stole all the attention from poor little Judy Ford,
miss Illinois, the woman who who won the.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Pageant that year.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
She had this spectacular boufont that stayed in its place
while she was doing her trampoline act. But the protests
stole all the attention and it was the first time
anyone had raised questions, first time anyone had really said,
what are you doing here? You're parading these young women
in their swimsuits like some kind of cattle auction. You
(13:32):
also just had a more creeping cynicism within journalism in
the nineteen seventies. There'd be sort of a raised eyebrow
like what is this really about? A sense of mockery,
and again the enduring question like what are these women
doing here?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
What is this about?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
You know, is there being objectified? And it led to
a lot of soul searching within the Miss America organization,
and for the most part, the women's movement moved on.
They had made their point, they had put themselves on
the map, and they had bigger targets to go after
following that. But it really was a blow. It was
(14:09):
a wound for miss America. They really felt threatened by this.
It was the first time anyone had raised questions about
the meaning of their institution, and it led to a
long period of soul searching and angst about what they
should do and how they should react to this movement
and how they should change to suit a new generation.
(14:31):
Through the sixties, this was really a competition for eighteen
year olds nineteen year olds. But one impact, indirect impact
of the women's movement is that you had these competitors
who were feeling a little more empowered and they were
more competitive, and they would keep competing, you know, even
(14:55):
after they were eighteen or nineteen. They would come back
the next year and try and try again. And so
you had this generation of older, more mature, more confident
Miss Americas. And they were interesting women who had stuff
to say, and they ended up kind of keeping the
attention of the media. Even if there was an undercurrent
(15:18):
of skepticism about pageants, the pageants still got a lot
of news coverage. People were very interested in the outcome,
and every time you had a new Miss America, there
is this sense of, well, here's our new ideal. What
does she tell us about young womanhood. In nineteen seventy
three or in nineteen seventy eight, the pageant remained huge.
(15:43):
It was still a big, big TV show, this big
annual event. Deep into the nineteen seventies, the networks would
fight over who had the rights to broadcast it, and
they would, you know, throw millions of dollars at the pageant.
It was an incredibly lucid of endeavor, and pageant culture continued.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
To be to be huge.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And you've been listening to Amy Argetsinger tell the story
of Miss America, and in the end, it's a story
about American history, about American cultural history, and how the
pageant changed, because in the end, America changed, but boy,
it didn't change fast. And though there were these big
riots and protests in sixty eight, it was still a
coveted piece of live programming by network television well into
(16:35):
the seventies. And what's so interesting is how this started.
You know, if you're a Jersey shore person or you're
no Long Island or the Northern Beaches pretty much beaches
and ends at Labor Day. And so what does Atlantic
City do. It comes up with an idea to bring
people back in late September, and it's just entrepreneurs trying
to figure out the next thing. And ultimately, because it
(16:57):
seems a little sleazy just parading girls around es, well,
they bring in the church ladies. They bring in all
kinds of folks to make it a more palatable project
and a more palatable piece of programming for mainstream America.
Which happened, and it did very well in the twenties
and thirties, but then came TV, and then came nineteen
(17:17):
fifty four and twenty seven million people watched Lee Merriweather
yet crowned Miss America. When we come back, more of
this remarkable story how Miss America came to be, how
it survived deep cultural changes. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we're back with our American stories and the story
of the cultural icon. It's been around for over a century,
the Miss America pageant. Here's Amy Argetsinger to continue with
the story of Miss America, some of the past winners
and the ways in which they changed the entire view
of the pageant.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Phyllis George was crowned in nineteen seventy and Phyllis was
a game changer, not just for Miss America but for
women in general. Is she was a Texas beauty queen,
just kind of you know, a typical All American girl, cheerleader,
played piano, wanted to be a teacher. But she just
(18:52):
had this big personality. I mean, she was also great looking,
she was also talented, but she had this really dazzling personality.
You know, a lot of Miss Americas in that era,
they would get to the end of their year and
they'd be ready to go back home to finish college,
(19:13):
to get married, whatever, and kind of go back into
quiet lives. Phillis, though, got a taste of ambition and
celebrity during her years Miss America and decided that she
wanted more than what her plan had been, so, you know,
she went to New York. The funny thing about her, though,
(19:35):
is that Phyllis wasn't an actress. She wasn't a singer,
though she could you know, handle a tune fine enough.
Her talent had been piano, but you know, let's face it,
she wasn't going to be a concert pianist, so she
was just trying to make it as something in New York.
She was doing a lot of TV commercials and trying
out for sitcoms when she ended up going out to
(19:58):
meet the president of CBS Sports. What was happening at
the time was that CBS Sports was trying to catch
up with ABC Sports, which had been doing some really
thrilling work wide world of sports, doing all this dramatic
stuff with the Olympics. CBS wanted to catch up and
(20:20):
they're thinking, well, how do we do this? And they're
realizing the missing element was women, both in terms of
who was on TV and who the viewers were. And
this one executive thought, I want to have a woman
in the announcer's box. And you know, he had tried
with one other woman who was a serious sports journalist,
(20:40):
and it didn't really work out. There was a lot
of backlash, and he ended up meeting Phyllis and they
talked for thirty minutes and he's just making chit chat
with her.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
He's like, so, do you know much about sports?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
And Phyllis says, well, I've dated a lot of athletes,
but she's so she was so charming and so funny
and could keep a conversation going after thirty minutes. The
officer or a job, and so she ends up being
a sports commentator and very successful, very quickly. She had
(21:14):
these incredible communication skills, some of which she learned from
being Miss America, some of which had helped her win
Miss America. And she would end up doing these softer
side stories, you know, profiles of athletes, talking to them
at their homes, finding out about their hobbies. We're all
really used to that kind of stuff now, but that
was really new and fresh and different at the time,
(21:36):
So she ended up being a real glass ceiling breaker
in sports broadcasting for women. She was the first to
really have success there. You know, she was on a
regular show that was a huge hit called NFL Today.
She was the first woman to do commentary during the
Super Bowl. It was just this incredible skyrocketing career and
(21:58):
I think a lot of the guys who watched her
head no idea she had even been Miss America, but
that had been very much her launching pad and the
thing that led her to try to reach for greater ambitions.
And you also saw that other Miss America's, other women
going into pageants, began to see that as a career path.
There's always that question, like Miss America, what does it
(22:20):
even mean? You know, especially if you're not like an
actress or a singer.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
What does it mean? And what do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, Phyllis kind of found that path, and with Phyllis's success,
pageants in a way became kind of a training ground
for this kind of thing. And since then we've had
so many female broadcasters who came from the world of pageants.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Because yeah, walking around in.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
A swimsuit is part of it, but a lot of
it is being able to think on your feet, to
answer questions in front of a microphone, to keep a
line of conversation going. And this was a skill set
that was perfect in the pageant system through the sixties,
and even with Phyllis George, the media coverage was very light,
(23:09):
was very puffy. They basically wanted to know if the
new Miss America had any pets, if she had a boyfriend,
you know, what her beauty secrets were. And if anyone
ever tried to ask Miss America what she thought about politics,
that reporter would be shut down. One of them I
think it was Debbie Bryant. In about nineteen sixty five,
(23:32):
a reporter tried to ask about the fact that there
had never been any African American contestants and what did
she think about this. Leonora Slaughter, the head of the pageant,
dragged Debbie, the new Miss America, out of the room
and basically shouted at the reporters she shouldn't have to
answer questions like that, she's not the president. I mean,
(23:52):
it was just and they were all coached one way
or the other. Do not answer these questions. Just don't
go there, don't go where there's any controvert, you know,
because they were thinking, oh, what about the advertisers, what
about the volunteers. We don't want to offend anyone. And
suddenly you had these Miss Americas who had a certain maturity,
life experience, and big career goals. Lorie Lee Schaeffer kind
(24:18):
of the typical baby boom Miss America.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know, she wore her hair and a flip.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
She's made it clear that she did not believe in
marijuana or premarital sex. She was a big Nixon fan.
She said she had never owned a pair of blue jeans,
you know, kind of all the stereotypes you have of
a very prim, old fashioned beauty queen.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
She was a little bit older.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
She was the first Miss America in many years to
already have her college degree.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
She had been trying.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
For three or four years to become Miss Ohio. She
went into this with a lot more maturity, and when
the journalists started asking her these questions, she kind of thought,
this is really cool that they're interested in what I think.
Laurie insisted that she be allowed to answer these questions.
She had political views that she felt strongly about. She
(25:10):
had lived through campus protests. She was a member of
the Lady's auxilliary for ROTC. She had had unpleasant experiences
with campus protesters, so she had strong feelings that she
came by honestly, and she didn't want to say no comment.
She wanted to say what she thought about Vietnam, about
(25:33):
the troops, about Richard Nixon, and so she did, and
the press was fascinated, and they'd asked her more questions
and she would hold forth on this and she had
very nuanced views on some topics. You'd never had a
Miss America who talked that forthrightly. In later years, it
became a ritual where it was almost like a litmus test.
(25:56):
Every Miss America would get out, what do you think
about abortion? What do you think about marijuana? But that
wasn't always the case. Laurie made that happen, and it
was interesting for journalists because, you know, the baby.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Boom was in full flourish.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
It was a time when everyone is trying to figure
out what's up with the kids these days? What do
the young people want? And you have a Miss America who,
you know, theoretically she's been crowned to some kind of
ideal and so, okay, here she is. She's our representative
of young America. What does she think? And Laurie showed
(26:31):
that this was one way Miss America could be somewhat
useful by stepping up and answering these questions and playing
that role of youth ambassador.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And you've been listening to Amy arget Singer and her
book there she was. The secret History of Miss America
is what we're talking about, and that is the story
of how Miss America came to be and how it changed.
Phyllis George, we learned, changed everything. And anybody who is around,
any of you who are older, know what Phyllis George did.
And he broke the mold and became a sports broadcaster
(27:02):
at CBS, trying to compete with the machine run Aldridge
had built at ABC. And then comes Lorie Lee Schaeffer
and Miss America was allowed to have opinions about things
other than her favorite color. When we come back more
of this remarkable story how Miss America came to be,
how it changed, survived, and thrived here on our American stories,
(27:37):
and we're back with our American stories and with the
final portion of the story of the constant yet ever
changing Miss America pageant. Back to Amy Argersinger.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So in the late eighties, the head of the Miss
America organization was a man named Leonard Horne, who was
a trial attorney of all things. I mean, he came
to Miss America as a volunteer, like a lot of
Atlantic City people, and he became concerned that there wasn't
enough for Miss Americas to do. They were basically standing
(28:11):
around looking pretty at sponsors events. They were signing autographs
and drug stores and things like that on behalf of Gillette,
and he just thought it was kind of tawdry. And
as it happened, that was when a woman named Kaylani
ray Rafco was crowned Miss America in nineteen eighty seven.
(28:34):
Kaylannie had this spectacular talent of Tahitian dance, really dazzling,
but she.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Was also a very serious young woman.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
She was an oncology nurse who was getting a graduate degree,
but she was already working as a nurse, and she
had a lot of interesting life experience and she felt
very strongly about the importance.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Of bringing more people into the nursing profession.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
So when she was Miss America, she was going around,
she was talking to Charity galas she was signing signatures
and drug stores and appearing at fashion shows and all that,
but she was also scheduling time to go into schools
and give them speeches about the importance of nursing careers. Well,
(29:23):
the media loved this. It was like incredibly interesting and
unexpected and different. Leonard Horne, the director of Miss America, thought.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
This is amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
This is really elevating Miss America. This is giving us
more of a sense of mission, and so he decided
to make that a formal part of what Miss Americas
would do. So a couple of years later he set
a new rule that they would have to have a cause,
a platform, and going into the nineties, this really did
(29:54):
do a lot for Miss America.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I think it kind of gave it a new lease
on life.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
It gave a bit of respectability. You had contestants who
were talking about homelessness, they were talking about education, they
were talking about AIDS, they were talking about all kinds
of issues. And there are a number of advocacy organizations
that were truly excited about this. Nicole Johnson, who actually
(30:20):
had diabetes and had to wear a diabetes pump during competition,
she ended up partnering with groups like JDRF who were
very excited to have this kind of spokesperson for their cause.
It lent Miss America a lot of dignity and a
lot of sense of mission. A lot of people always
(30:44):
loved the story of Heather white Stone, who was hard
of hearing, deaf Miss America, the first Miss America with
a disability. She was a young woman who socially had
trouble fitting in. She was typically going to mainstream schools
and because she couldn't hear, often just was not part
(31:09):
of the conversation.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
She always felt bad that people.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Would talk to her and she just didn't recognize and
so people thought she was aloof But she got into
pageants and that's where she found a lot of her
friendships and her sense of community. When she became Miss America,
her crowning was rather dramatic because she couldn't hear them
call her name. She had hearing aids, but they didn't
(31:36):
work so well in a situation like that. She could
read lips, but you know, it was Reis Philbin reading
the names and he was sort of standing behind her.
She had no idea that she was Miss America until
her first runner up basically looked her in the eyes
and said.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Hits you. And that's, you know, another kind.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Of great TV moment, and that was a high moment
from America's ratings in the nineties, you know, the pageant.
Of course, it's much smaller these days, but Miss America
kind of put itself up on this pedestal. So we
think about it in different terms and we talk about
its relevance, and I realized, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
It's like, there was a.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Time when like TV variety shows were a big deal,
and that was when Miss America was a big deal.
So how is it that Miss America even still exists.
There's like no other pop culture icon from the nineteen
twenties that is still a thing today except for Mickey Mouse.
It's Mickey Mouse and Miss America. And that's basically it.
(32:41):
You know, why did it last so long? I think
that's kind of the compelling thing about it. And I
really do think a lot of that is because of
the young women who competed and the young women who won.
Anytime there is any change in the organization to make
it more in it wasn't because of the producers or
(33:04):
the directors jazzing it up. And god knows they tried,
you know, changing the rules and having callin voters and
you know, saying that they had to be barefoot for
the swimsuit, or you know, adding the platforms. All of
this stuff was just window dressing. The thing that kept
people interested was the young women and how they evolved.
(33:26):
Whether it was you know, someone groundbreaking like Bess Myerson,
the first Jewish Miss America, or Vanessa Williams the first
African American Miss America, or in between, some Miss Americas
whose names people don't really know anymore, who were modern
or provocative, who pushed things forward Yolanda bett Bees who
(33:47):
refused to wear a swimsuit for the sponsors back in
nineteen fifty, or women like Lori Lee Schaeffer or Terrymuson
who were a little bit older and they were strident,
outgoing baby boomers who were willing to talk about politics
in the nineteen seventies, or women in the nineties like
(34:09):
Leanza Cornett and Kate Shindall who became AIDS activists. These
are the women who brought like texture and energy and
a dynamism to what was an inherently dated and strange format.
Miss Americas were changing because young women and our society
(34:31):
were changing, and that became a compelling narrative for us
in the viewing public to follow, and we did. You know,
I think the biggest surprise for a lot of people
is to realize the extent that it was a very
fervent culture and these women were competing over and over again.
(34:56):
And it wasn't just that they were competing year after year,
they were competing week after week. In some cases they
might compete at three or four local competitions. And what
you have happened there is even though it sounds a
little obsessive or weird, it's actually the formation of a community.
(35:21):
And meanwhile, they're returning again and again a competition, seeing
the same people time after time. And these are women
who they have something in common with, sure, their rivals,
but they're also colleagues in a way. I mean, it's
a great crazy scene of people who are all dressed up,
(35:43):
but they're also like carrying stadium cups of beer because
it's just this big convention center and they're waving signs
with their girls face on it and everything. But you know,
it's a sporting event and even while you think you're
there kind of to laugh at it you get caught
up in the competition, you get caught up in the
(36:04):
horse race. And I remember describing this to my uncle.
My uncle was a race car driver. He said to me,
I don't get it. I don't understand these women or
why they do this thing. And I explained to him, well,
you know, it's kind of either going for a personal best.
They're trying and trying. They like the sense of competition.
(36:28):
They go around on the circuit, they see the same people,
there's a familiarity.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And he looked at me. He said, oh, it's a sport.
I get it.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And I said, that's right, it's a sport. These women
they had this kind of very pragmatic attitude. They're they're
wearing sweats, they're pulling, you know, their roller bags that
are filled with makeup or whatever around and it's like
it's more like, you know, the half marathoning circuit or
like Master's swimming or something like that, except that they're
wearing you know, Mike eyelashes. It's just another sport and
(37:02):
its survival is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And a terrific job on the production by our own
Madison Derricott and a special thanks to Amy Argersinger. Author
of There she was the Secret History of Miss America.
And you can go to your local bookstore, go to Amazon,
or wherever you get your books. We love celebrating authors
by all means. Pick up the book. There's so much
more there. And we learn in that last segment that,
my goodness, there were some other game changers too. Hey
(37:28):
Lonnie ray Rafko, for instance, an oncology nurse who brought
in the idea that well, these winners can have causes,
and those causes go on to be aids and other charities,
and other political causes. Heather Whitestone, who was deaf and
didn't hear the call when Regis Philbin crowned her Miss America.
What a moment on Live TV. And what we learned
(37:49):
in the end is that this is a competition. It's
this spirit of sport. These girls go out on the circuit,
they get to know one another, the local circuit, the
state circuit, and in the end they have good fun
competing against one another and learning a lot about life
in the process. As Amy pointed out, no other pop
culture but Mickey Mouse is still around since the nineteen twenties.
(38:11):
The story of Miss America here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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