Margaret Gorman—Accidently First Miss America

Margaret Gorman won three Atlantic City beauty pagents one weekend in 1922, one of them was retroactively declared Miss America.  She certainly looked patriotic in her widely circulated publicity photos. 

On September 8, 1921 lovely young 16 year old Margaret Gorman won not one, but two beauty pageants on a visit to Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Just a wisp of a girl, 108 pound soaking wet—if you didn’t count soggy pounds of the voluminous bathing suits of the era, Gorman had been declared queen of her home town Washington, D.C. where she was still an athletic school girl with a sparkling personality.

As Miss District of Columbia she had been invited to the sea side resort for the Atlantic City Beauty Pageant.  While she was there she was also invited to compete in a rival event then known as the Inter-City Beauty Pageant.  It was there that she was declared Inter-City Beauty, Amateur.  The fledgling contest also had a new wrinkle, perfect of its beachfront home—a bathing beauty contest.  She won that, too, and was proclaimed The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America and awarded the Mermaid Trophy.

Due to the diligence of some hard working flack, Miss Gorman’s picture was splattered on the front pages of newspapers up and down the east coast and the fledgling pageant was featured in newsreels shown in theaters around the country.

The local Atlantic City boosters who sponsored the contest were delighted and recognized that the beauty pageant could become a major draw for tourist dollars.  They planned a second pageant for the next year.

Gorman was invited back in 1922 to defend her title.  But there was a problem.  Another girl had since been elected Miss D.C.  Almost as an afterthought, pageant officials let her compete as the reigning Miss America.  Despite being a favorite of both fans and photographers she did not win.  Mary Katherine Campbell, Miss Columbus, Ohio unseated her.

Gorman became a rich and fashionable Washington socialite and dog fancier.

Gorman returned to Washington and continued to compete successfully in other pageants and worked as a professional model.  She married Victor Cahill and settled into a life as a fashionable Washington socialite.  She died in her home town in 1990.

As for Campbell, she accomplished what Gorman could not, returning to take the title in 1923.  She competed one more time in 1924, becoming First Runner Up after which the rules were changed to prevent competing for more than one year.  She was also the last young woman to compete in a system where professional models, amateurs, and bathing beauty winners competed for the Miss America Crown.

The pageant eventually took the name of its crowned winner.  It had an up and down history, tainted by occasional scandals and changes in management.  The contest was suspended for a few years in due to the Depression.

A few years later it was back in business and promoting a Hollywood screen test as one of its major prizes.  Among girls competing was Dorothy Lamour who managed to get into films on her own.

The pageant didn’t really become the American institution most of us recognize until 1945 when the top prize became a $5,000 college scholarship and Bess Myerson, Miss New York became the first—and only—Jew wear the tiara.

The first and only Jewish Miss America ushered in the modern era of the Pageant in 1945 and launched a long career as a model/spokeswoman and later New York City Consumer Protection Commissioner. 

In 1952 pageant co-sponsor Catalina Swimwear pulled out of the contest when the final announcement of the runners up and winners was conducted in evening gowns instead of bathing suits.  The company set up a rival pageant program—Miss USA/Miss Universe which dispensed with Miss America’s Talent completion and emphasized flesh in sexier bathing suits, eventually including rather modest bikini.

In 1955 annual national television broadcasts began and host Bert Parks crooned There She is, Miss America for the first time.  The winner was Lee Merriweather  who, like Myerson, would go on to a successful TV career.

Burt Parks announcing a winner in his long run as Miss America host.

Through the 50’s and into the 70’s the Miss America Pageant was annually the most popular show on television, beating events like The Oscars, and baseball’s World Series games in those days before the Super Bowl became an unofficial national holiday.  The show promoted solidly conservative values and although scholarships were the prize, it was made clear that contestants had no career ambitions beyond marriage and raising a family.

Changes in cultural attitudes began to batter the pageant in the late 1960’s.  There were protests against exclusion of Black contestants.  But it really drew the ire of Feminists who derided it as a meat market.  There was a protest outside the contest in Atlantic City in 1967.  The next tumultuous year, 1968 had an even bigger protest that attracted wide-spread attention. 400 protesters from the New York Radical Women crowned a sheep queen and trashed beauty products including make-up, false eyelashes, wigs, and bras.  They wanted to burn the items in a barrel, but no permit could be obtained.  Just the suggestion of a conflagration caused the press to proclaim the protestors bra burners and add a new pejorative to the American lexicon.

Reports that 1968 feminist protests to the Miss America Pageant would include burning beauty products including bras made the term Bra Burner a popular epithet for years.

Although still hugely popular, producers began to fret that the pageant was losing its appeal to younger viewers.  Before the 1980 pageant iconic host Parks was unceremoniously fired setting off wide spread protests led by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.  Despite the backlash, pageant officials stuck by their guns.  Former Tarzan Ron Ely became the first of a string of hosts and co-hosts, none of whom were able to stem the tide.   For the 70th anniversary in 1991, Parks was brought on by host Gary Collins to sing his famous anthem for the last time.  A year later he was dead.

In 1984 Vanessa Williams finally became the first Black to win the pageant.  But her reign was cut short when she was forced to resign after nude pictures from an earlier photo shoot appeared in Penthouse.  Despite the scandal Williams has had perhaps the most successful post-Miss America career ever as a model, recording artist, actress, and business executive.  Several other African-Americans have since won.

Vanessa Williams's Penthouse photos caused the first Black Miss America her crown.  But she went on to the most successful career of any winner as a singer, actress, model, and buisnesswoman.

The pageant never really recovered from the Parks debacle and rating for the TV broadcast fell for several years despite increasingly frantic attempts to breathe new life into the franchise.  After only 10 million households tuned in for the 2004 show, ABC dropped it like a hot potato.

Officials had to scramble to find a home on Country Music Television (CMT) and tinkered with the format.  They also abandoned the pageant’s roots in Atlantic City for the glitzy casino glamor of Las Vegas.  After only two years CMT declined to pick up its options through 2011.

After having to delay the traditional post-Labor Day program until January 2008 when TLC finally picked it up.

In the meantime the MissUSA/Miss Universe pageants had been picked up by Donald Trump who pumped them up with gaudy productions and lots of skin.  Those shows remained popular draws.  But several scandals and quirky selections of host cities—including for a time scenic Gary, Indiana for Miss USA have damaged that property.  The Miss Universe Pageants decision to stick by production in Moscow despite systematic oppression of Gays, drew sharp criticism from activists.

When his last Miss Universe Paulina Vega of Columbia criticized Donald Trump for his slurs against Mexicans and immigrants.  Trump called her a hypocrite for refusing to surrender her crown.  He soon had to sell his interest in the Miss Universe system of pageants or risk them becoming worthless as media outlets boycotted them

When Trump launched his notorious Presidential Campaign in 2015 with outrageous slurs against Mexicans outraged protests from across Latin America where the Miss Universe Pageant had become a revered contest of national pride and NBC and Univision—part owners with Trump—announced that they would refuse to air the pageants.  Trump first bought back NBC’s shares and days later, only able to put the shows on the low rent, low prestige Reelz channel suffering disastrous ratings, sold the whole business to a modeling agency.

By contrast the Miss America pageant where winners dedicate themselves to promoting personal “platforms” during their year long reign looks like a model of social responsibility.  It returned to its Atlantic City roots.  In 2010 the show came back to network TV on ABC where it is produced with the slick Dick Clark Productions and has once again become a major ratings winner.

If you are interested, you can see this year’s pageant Sunday night, September 11 capping a full week of hoopla on the Boardwalk.  The show will be hosted by Chris Harrison and co-hosted by Sage Steele, whoever the hell they are.  Evidently ABC/Disney go-to-host Tom Bergeron is busy.

Among the celebrity judges will be Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas, musician and actress Laura Marano, sports team owner and celebrity rich dude Mark Cuban, actress Sara Foster fromVH1’s aptly named Barely Famous, singer-songwriter Cole Swindell, Grammy Award winning entertainer and tertiary super star Ciara, and former Miss America Sharlene Wells Hawkes.   That’s less star power wattage than a basic cable reality show, although Cuban at least, has been a reality show judge.

Miss America 2015 Kira Kazantsev of New York, 23, a daughter of Russian immigrants, broke the mold and made headlines by making ending domestic violence her Platform and pulling no punches in press interviews and social media posts.  

Could Missouri's Erin O'Flaherty make history be becoming the first out lesbian to win the Miss America crown this year?

After a safe year with a Broadway infatuated Georgian, this year Miss Missouri, Erin O’Flaherty will be the first out lesbian contestant in the pageant which is rumored to have had several former in-the-closet competitors, winners, officials, and judges.

Miss America has come a long way from Margaret Gorman.