Bess Myerson

Bess Myerson (July 16, 1924 – December 14, 2014) was an American politician, model, and television actress who in 1945 became the first Miss America who was Jewish.

Her achievement, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was seen as an affirmation of the Jewish place in American life.

She was a heroine to parts of the Jewish community, where "she was the most famous pretty girl since Queen Esther."

Myerson began studying piano when she was nine years old and was in the second class of New York's High School of Music and Art in 1937, graduating in 1941.

She went on to Hunter College, graduating with honors in 1945 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music.

To support herself and her family while in college she gave piano lessons for fifty cents an hour, and worked as a music counselor at a girl's summer camp in Vermont.

By the time she was 21, Myerson was 5 ft tall with "luxuriant brown hair".

Myerson was entered into the Miss New York City competition, without her knowledge, by John C. Pape, a retired steel magnate and amateur photographer who had employed her as a model while she was in college.

When Myerson was told about the pageant by her sister, Sylvia, who was acquainted with Pape, Myerson was angry as she felt that the beauty business was "embarrassing."

However, she was persuaded to compete by Sylvia, and she competed in the swimsuit competition using a borrowed bathing suit.

Myerson went on to enjoy competing in the pageant, in which she stood out from the other contestants because of her height.

On August 15, 1945, the day of Japan's surrender (VJ Day), she won the competition for the pageant, and moved on to the Miss America competition, partly motivated by the $5,000 scholarship awarded to the winner.

She later told interviewers she wanted to buy a black Steinway grand piano with the scholarship money.

Myerson was the Miss New York entry in the 1945 Miss America pageant, and she competed in the talent portion of the contest by performing the music of Edvard Grieg and George Gershwin.

Prior to the competition, she was pressured to use a pseudonym that "sounded less Jewish."

Despite revelations of the Holocaust in the previous months, America was still widely perceived as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant society which manifested hostility towards people of Jewish ancestry.

Myerson refused, and was subjected to substantial antisemitism.

After she won the title on September 8, 1945, three of the pageant's five sponsors withdrew from having her represent their companies as Miss America.

She paid for graduate studies at Juilliard and Columbia University with the pageant scholarship money.

An aspiring pianist, she briefly gave recitals on the vaudeville circuit before realizing audiences were more interested in seeing her in a bathing suit.

She also played with the New York Philharmonic and appeared at Carnegie Hall.

While Myerson was on her year-long tour as Miss America, she encountered "No Jews" signs posted in places such as hotels and country clubs.

Such experiences led her to conduct lectures on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League titled "You Can't Be Beautiful and Hate".

Myerson became a vocal opponent of antisemitism and racism, and her speaking tour became the highlight of her Miss America reign.

Myerson made frequent television appearances during the 1950s and 1960s.

A few years after hearing her speak at an ADL function, television producer Walt Framer hired Myerson for the 1950s game show The Big Payoff.

She was the "Lady in Mink" modeling the grand prize mink coat, and introducing guests and prizes, throughout the 1951 to 1959 network run of the program.

She was a commissioner in the New York City government, served on presidential commissions from the 1960s through the 1980s, and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate.

Her career in public service ended in the late 1980s when she was indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges.

She was acquitted after a highly publicized trial.

Myerson was born in The Bronx, New York to Louis Myerson and Bella (née Podell), who were Jewish immigrants from Russia.

Myerson's father worked as a housepainter, handyman, and carpenter.

After Myerson's birth, the family moved from the South Bronx to Shalom Aleichem Houses, a cooperative apartment complex in the northern Bronx.

She had three siblings: a younger sister, Helen; an elder sister, Sylvia; and a brother, Joseph, who died at the age of three before Myerson was born.

Her upbringing emphasized the importance of scholarship, not physical beauty.

In addition to tradesmen, her neighbors included poets, writers, and artists.

Myerson reached her adult height when she was 12 and towered over other children, something she said made her feel "awkward and gawky" during her preadolescence.

Myerson recalled one of her worst childhood memories was playing the Popeye character Olive Oyl in an elementary school play.

In 2015, Religion News Service observed that at the time that she won the pageant, emaciated concentration camp survivors had only just shed their prison clothes.

"Bess Myerson represented the resurrection of the Jewish body—the journey from degradation to beauty."