The Night She Won Miss America
The book jacket featuring the young girl in flounced ball gown and elbow length silk gloves, not to mention the bright pink band indicative of a beauty pageant that slashes diagonally across the cover, screams chick lit, but the story is not. The Night She Won Miss America by Michael Callahan examines, or perhaps dissects, the iconic Miss America pageant as seen through the eyes of a reluctant participant, and reveals that like most shiny icons, a bit of tarnish lurks just below the surface.
Betty Jane Welsh reluctantly—very reluctantly—enters the Miss Delaware Pageant to please her mother. “Agreeing to enter a ridiculous bathing beauty pageant will surely get her mother into the Junior League . . . Declining will surely kill her chances.” Betty’s mother desperately wants in the Junior League, and Betty doesn’t want her “to be sentenced to a lifetime of exclusion.” Such are the societal goals of many women in the summer of 1949.
Betty enters the pageant and to her amazement, wins. Then it’s off to Atlantic City and the Miss America Pageant. “This is the hidden cost of being the good daughter, the good student, the good girl. People take advantage: with flattery, with emotional manipulation, one slice of lemon cake at a time.”
As Betty prepares to leave for Atlantic City, she reflects on her own character. You can’t be a good girl, relishing all the approval of parents, teachers, and society in general, than claim that no one appreciates that she may have other expectations. Betty recognizes the dichotomy of her reflections and carries the awareness with her to Atlantic City.
With Betty’s arrival in Atlantic City, Callahan’s meticulous research into the Miss America Pageant creates the world of September 1949: its fashions, its customs, societal standards of behavior expected of participants, the sights, the sounds, even the smells. It is a world of pearls, white gloves, garter belts and nylons, Shalimar perfume and little hats, modest swimsuits, and bodies as God and not a cosmetic surgeon made them. To today’s youth it is a foreign world, and it is a credit to Callahan’s descriptive narrative that he can recreate such a world and imbue it with life.
After officially registering for the pageant Betty meets Miss Rhode Island, Catherine Grace Moore, called CiJi. “It’s a better name for a movie marquee, I think. I came up with it myself.”
Ciji treats the pageant with a refreshing irreverence, calling its director “Mother Abbess,” and admits she is using the pageant as a stepping stone to Hollywood and a film career. She smokes, she drinks, and encourages Betty to sneak out to go nightclubbing with their college boy escorts. CiJi is a privotal character, a human plot twist. If Betty had not met her, not formed a bond of friendship with her, then Betty’s subsequent decision that results in such turmoil and scandal might never happened.
Betty’s next fateful meeting is with her escort, John Griffin McAllister, called Griff by his friends. “she’d bet her grandmother’s pearls that she has just won the Miss America escort derby.” Griff is “crackerjack handsome,” a girl’s dream even if she does catch him moving his lips as though he is talking to somebody. Griff is what every girl hopes for in a young love.
Betty performs the charade that is the pageant: bathing (in a modest swimsuit) in the ocean; parading down the boardwalk; posing for endless photographs; riding on Delaware’s float in a parade; and never being seen smoking, drinking, or being caught in a nightclub. She does, however, answer questions from a young reporter, Eddie Tate, from the local Atlantic City newspaper. As it turns out, speaking to reporters alone is forbidden. A contestant must always have a pageant chaperon present. Betty isn’t too concerned, since she knows she won’t win Miss America anyway, so what does it matter who she talks to or what she says?
As the pageant moves along and Betty spends more time with Griff, First Love Young Love engulfs the two, creating an emotional abyss that neither sees nor admits exists. Griff warns Betty that if she wins Miss America, he will end their relationship. Betty is certain she won’t win, so ignores his words. The pageant continues, their relationship continues, then in a final blow Betty wins Miss America, and Griff dumps her.
Sitting alone in her hotel room Betty sees a dismal future. “Now I’m trapped in this prison, this jail that will move from state to state, to school gymnasiums and city halls and pep rallies and car dealerships, for the next year. And by then it will too late. Griff will have found someone new.”
Betty persuades CiJi to find Griff and bring him to her hotel room, a violation of the rules for the new Miss America. Ciji’s search is successful, and she sneaks Griff into Betty’s room. In the remaining hours of the night Betty makes the decision to run away Griff, unofficially abdicating her position as Miss America. It is a decision that illustrates in a tragic manner that Young Love First Love is hardly ever Wise Love.
Based on a true story, The Night She Won Miss America is a Romeo and Juliet story set against the background of a beauty pageant, and like Romeo and Juliet, the tale doesn’t end well.
On the whole Callahan does a creditable job creating the character of Betty, although her dialogue is sometimes a little too literary for a middle-class good girl from Rhode Island with little life experience. Betty’s impulsive decision to run away with a boy she’s known only a few days is very believable, as is her gradual realization that she has made a selfish and ultimately tragic choice. Highly recommended for those in search of a good novel.