The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

  “And I have some sort of moral duty to share it?”

  “You have an opportunity to educate people.”

  “That’s a liberal application of the word ‘educate,’ Mr. McCall. We are not talking about the details of the Yalta Conference.”

  He cracks a smile. She is spirited, eloquent, direct, a deft fencer with words and reason. If she were six decades younger he’d be asking her out. He can see what led Griff McAllister to fall for her, to do what he did for her. To literally lose his mind for her. He wishes he could be recording this. It’s gold. And all off the record.

  He looks at her with a fondness he never expected to feel and hopes she can see that it is organic, genuine, not some act of manufactured smarminess. “You’re right, of course,” he says. “It’s not the Yalta Conference. But it is a missing chapter in the life and history of an American institution. And I think that’s a shame. Will others show up to bother you if you talk to me? Maybe. I can’t promise they won’t. But I can promise that no one can tell your story more fairly, more honestly, and better than I can. And deep down I think you’d like to tell it, to share it, to help people understand, if not specifically what happened to you, what happens to someone when you are suddenly an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. I do believe there is value in that, Mrs. Proctor. I honestly do. But I am not here to badger you into this. For one thing, I suspect you cannot be badgered, by me or anyone else.”

  She laughs, and it catches him off guard. “My grandchildren,” she says quietly, “would disagree.”

  He nods. “I’m sure. So how about this? How about we just sit, and have a lovely visit, and drink some tea, and enjoy this nice fire.”

  The room falls silent, the only sounds the snapping and popping of the glowing orange wood, the quarter-hour bong of the grandfather clock in the hall. Her eyes are warm but studying. He can almost hear her weighing sides inside her head. But he remains quiet. If nothing else, this has been a start, the crack, whether anything comes of it or not.

  “Pour yourself some more tea,” she says, leaning over the table and lifting the cover of the cake plate. A wonderful aroma fills the air, sweet and tart. She cuts a generous slice of the yellow cake, tips it onto a sage green plate, hands it to him with a dessert fork and a linen napkin.

  He brings it up to his nostrils, takes in a deep whiff. Lemon. “Smells delicious,” he says. “What is it?”

  “It,” she says, again leaning back into the sofa, slowly crossing her legs, “is where the story starts.”

  Author’s Note

  In September 1987 I got my first job in magazine publishing, as a writer at Atlantic City magazine, which operated out of a ratty former shoe store on Atlantic Avenue. It was run by a fabulous woman named Frances Freedman, who always wore fur coats draped over her shoulders and who had a mad penchant for tuna salad. Atlantic City in those days was beguiling: casino gambling was less than a decade old, and there was this feeling of expectancy everywhere. And the characters! Donald Trump (and Ivana), Mike Tyson, and Celestine Tate, the woman who played the keyboard with her tongue on the Boardwalk.

  During my first week, I was promptly dispatched to see all of the preparations for the upcoming Miss America Pageant at Convention Hall. At one point I ended up alone in the historic arena, so—making sure no one else was around—I snuck a walk down the legendary runway. And it struck me, standing at the runway’s terminus, looking around at those thousands of seats, how powerful an experience it must be to actually win.

  Over the years I wrote several stories about the pageant, one of them centered on a little-known chapter in Miss America history. In 1937, egged on by her girlfriends, seventeen-year-old Bette Cooper had entered a beauty contest at an amusement park in Bertrand Island, New Jersey. She won, finding herself a most unlikely contestant at Miss America that September. Back in those days the pageant assigned each young lady who competed an escort, a young man from one of the area’s better families to squire her around for the week. Bette’s escort was named Louis Off, a dashing twenty-two-year-old who drove a maroon Buick Special convertible and whose family ran a prominent nursery called Brighton Farms. Bette and Lou fell hard for each other; Lou sent Bette orchids every day. But Lou did not want to be “Mr. Miss America” and told Bette plainly that if she won, their relationship was over. Naïve and love-struck, Bette thought such an outcome impossible.

  And then she won.

  True to his word, Lou broke off their relationship that very night. (When I interviewed Lou many years later, he told me how much he regretted how he had handled it.) Bette was inconsolable, later calling Lou in the middle of the night. Arriving at her hotel, he asked her if she wanted to get out of being Miss America, and she said yes. With the help of two buddies, he spirited her out of the hotel, into his car, and then into a boat, where they hid moored off of the Steel Pier as a countywide manhunt for the missing beauty queen ensued.

  The next day, Lou drove Bette home to northern New Jersey, just as furious pageant officials uncovered their caper. A chilly détente was struck, where Bette agreed to a few appearances as Miss America. Alas, like many summer romances, Bette and Lou’s fizzled. The following September, Marilyn Meseke of Ohio was crowned the new Miss America.

  The pageant abandoned the escort program.

  Each year the Miss America Organization extends an invitation to all of the surviving members who comprise the unique sorority of its former titleholders to come back for the contest. Bette Cooper never accepted. She never spoke about what happened that eventful night. Instead, she retreated to a quiet life as a wife and mother in Connecticut, where as far as I know she still lives, now in her mid-nineties. Piqued by her story, reporters have occasionally tracked her down and knocked on her door, asking to interview her. She’s told them all the same thing: “There is no Miss America here.”

  Though these facts about Bette Cooper inspired this novel, it is important to note that The Night She Won Miss America is purely and completely a work of fiction. Betty Jane Welch is a character developed from my own overly active imagination, as are the other characters and dramatic circumstances she encounters. And while several named real-life people make appearances—chief among them pageant director Lenora Slaughter—their words and actions here are strictly fictitious. I only hope this invented narrative proves as entertaining as the strange, scandalous true tale of the apple-cheeked ingénue from New Jersey who, in 1937, changed the course of Miss America forever.

  Acknowledgments

  The irony of writing a book is that it is a solitary enterprise—you and the blank page—that in the end requires the help of an extraordinary amount of people. My agent, Jane Dystel, was as usual my brassy, sassy advocate. I have been blessed to find in my editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Nicole Angeloro, a kindred spirit who both shares my unvarnished love of midcentury glamour and who provided incisive direction and deft edits to help polish the narrative.

  When it came time to actually write, I discovered a sanctuary in the Martha’s Vineyard Writer’s Residency at the Noëpe Center for Literary Arts in Edgartown, Massachusetts. I started this book there, and I finished it there. To its director, the elegiac poet Justen Ahren, and its convivial house managers, Jack Sonni and Sean Murphy, I extend my heartfelt appreciation for creating such a welcoming and inspiring space in which to create.

  Of course, good historical fiction starts with research, and there was much to undertake with this story. Both Beth Ryan, coordinator at the Atlantic City Historical Museum, and Heather Perez, archivist of the Atlantic City Heritage Collections at the Heston Room in the Atlantic City Free Public Library, were invaluable in guiding me to clippings, letters, menus, memorabilia, and endless spools of microfiche about Miss America and Atlantic City in 1949. I have done my best to stay as true to the feel and traditions of both the pageant and the era as I possibly could, while making creative allowances to advance the story. Any mistakes are completely my own.

  Additional t
hanks go out to Christine Sullivan, the former general manager at the Chanler at Cliff Walk (in 1949 known as Cliff Lawn Manor), in Newport, Rhode Island, who courteously hosted me for several days and replied to my many detailed inquiries about the history of the beautiful property; Bertram Lippincott III, reference librarian and genealogist at the Newport Historical Society Museum & Library, who just might know more about Newport than anyone else alive; harpist extraordinaire Anita Findley, who explained the ins and outs of playing that beautiful instrument; and Dr. Neel Burton, professor of psychiatry at Oxford University and the author of Living with Schizophrenia, who not only patiently answered my many questions about the disorder and its manifestations, but also took the time to take me on a lovely walking tour of the private Oxford gardens on that rarest of occasions, a sunny day in England.

  Of course, no one understands what it is like to actually be Miss America better than the women who have worn the famous tiara. I am forever indebted to the incredibly warm and lovely Bea Waring—the former BeBe Shopp, Miss America 1948—whose recollection of her time at the pageant remains razor-sharp, and who was gracious enough to share her memories with me. My additional gratitude to all of the former Miss Americas whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing over the years: Phyllis George, Heather French, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, Kate Shindle, Donna Axum, Angela Perez Baraquio, Carolyn Sapp, Ericka Dunlap, and Kellye Cash.

  Several books assisted my research, chief among them Frank Deford’s There She Is: The Life and Times of Miss America, which, almost fifty years after its publication, remains the seminal work about the pageant; and also Miss America: In Pursuit of the Crown, by Ann-Marie Bivans; Atlantic City: 125 Years of Ocean Madness, by Vicki Gold Levi and Lee Eisenberg; 1940s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook, by Emmanuelle Dirix and Charlotte Fiell; and 1940’s Style Guide: The Complete Illustrated Guide to 1940’s Fashion for Men and Women, by Debbie Sessions.

  And finally some personal mercis, to my fellow Miss America–ophile Lisa DePaulo, who shares my obsessive love of the pageant and its colorful history; to Jenny DeMonte, who as the editor of New Jersey Monthly in 1994 let me write the story of Bette Cooper, planting the seeds for this book; to my beta readers, Cheryl Della Pietra, Christy Speer Lejeune, and Jean Callahan, who provided thoughtful feedback; and to all of my family and friends, always there to support my storytelling endeavors. And lastly, to my wonderful mom, Eileen, who suitably oohed and aahed over the kooky crayoned stories I whipped up when I was a little boy, and saved each and every one: For all of the years of calls, cards, and the very best hugs—I love you.

  Prologue

  December 1955

  Good enough, she thinks, puckering one more time into a piece of tissue. She leans away a little from the dressing table, makes a final appraisal. Maybe a touchup with some light powder. She snaps the compact shut, stands, and steps back from the mirror. One last long view: tailored wool suit (fifteen dollars at Oppenheim Collins on West Thirty-Fourth Street), a single strand of pearls, gloves, and her hat. Since she was old enough to understand fashion, she has abided by one credo and one credo only, and that is from Edna Woolman Chase, the editor of Vogue: “Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess.”

  She slips her arms into her coat. She will not be outside long, but still, she will be outside. She takes a deep breath.

  I’m ready.

  Should she bring her bag? Yes, it will have her identification inside. She slides it onto her crooked forearm, then downs the final gulp of whiskey from the crystal tumbler on her dressing table, feels it barrel down her throat, warm and bitter. A small smile escapes as she glances at the suitcase and hatbox beside the door. Both are empty. Thank God, neither of the girls had the chance to pick them up before they’d left. She’d have been found out. And then what would she have done?

  She steps out into the hallway. Quiet. It is Friday, the last before Christmas. Most of the girls have left already. The lucky ones are sipping champagne, on dates at the Stork or the Harwyn, others already on trains or buses back home for the holidays, bags packed and brimming with lies about their fizzy days in the big city. Those left behind are scattered about the building, “the Women,” as they are known but never called, each locked on the other side of her door, her only company tepid tea and crossword puzzles.

  She passes the elevator bank. If she steps into the elevator, there will most certainly be questions from the operator, one always desperate for a story. Instead, she exits the door at the end of the hall that leads to the stairwell, beginning a slow, steady ascent up the steps.

  It is fifteen minutes before she pushes the door out, feels the whoosh of crisp night air rush at her. She is winded from walking up so many flights in heels, but the biting chill feels good seizing her lungs. She steps onto the veranda, looks out onto New York—on beautiful, wonderful, dizzying New York, teeming with life, each tiny lit window a tale: of someone, of something, of heartbreak and triumph and joy and agony and stupidity and sorrow and sex and laughter and betrayal and loneliness.

  She takes in another deep breath, places her hands on the balustrade. It is, she thinks, a glorious night to die.

  One

  June 1955

  It was curious that a building so large, with so many people hurrying in so many different directions, could be so quiet. And yet the noise inside Grand Central was not so much cacophony, as one might expect from the “train station of the world,” but rather a low, steady hum, like a running current of electricity, fed by hundreds and hundreds of people passing one another by.

  Laura wanted to stay here. Just stay still and be. Stand invisible and safe by the elegant old clock in the middle of the terminal and study the faces of every single person coming and going. Imagine their backstories, invent tales of long-lost lovers reunited, rushing to one another as the sun splashed, cathedral-like, down from the long, slender windows. It was at these moments when she felt her body tense with energy. She could write their stories. Would write them. It was, after all, why she had come.

  She looked at the clock again. One.

  I’d better call.

  She lugged her suitcases over to a wall of phone booths and slipped into the last of them. “Yes, operator?” she said. “I’d like to place a collect call to Greenwich, Connecticut, please. Greenwich-1, 3453.”

  David picked up. For an eleven-year-old, he had a strange obsession with the phone, always wanted to answer it, which no one could explain but everyone acquiesced to, grateful he didn’t sport even more peculiar habits. His cousin Donald had occasionally been caught wearing his mother’s jewelry, which everyone also knew but never acknowledged. Such things were not spoken of in the Dixon family.

  “Hey, Bucko, it’s Laura,” she said, enjoying the unvarnished glee in his voice as he unleashed an avalanche of questions about the train ride down, about the apartment—she’d stopped correcting him that it was just a room—that she actually had yet to step into. “No, no, no,” she was saying, trying to cut him off. “I’m still in the train station. I promise I will write you a long letter and tell you everything as soon as there is an everything to tell. But I will tell you I already bought you something.”

  He sounded as if he might actually reach through the phone to get it. “What?! What?!!”

  “The latest Batman. I think they get them earlier here than they do at Carson’s.” Now in a complete frenzy, he insisted on knowing what the cover looked like, what the story was about. She fumbled with her bag and extracted the July issue of Detective Comics. “The Thousand-and-One Escapes of Batman and Robin,” she relayed, perusing the cover image of Batman and his trusty sidekick bound and about to drown. Marmy didn’t like David reading comic books—“Superman is not going to get him accepted at Yale” was a favorite axiom—but Laura’s father pointed out that it was better than an addiction to television. “I’ll send it back with Marmy when she visits.”

  “No, no!” the boy protested. “She’ll just throw it out.”

 
; He had a point. “Hmm. Okay, how about this: I’ll hide it inside another gift for you. See how that works out? Now you’ll get two things from New York.”

  Mollified, he went to get his mother. Laura had pictured Marmy waiting by the phone for her call, but instead heard David yelling up the stairs, telling her to pick up. Perhaps she had one of her headaches.

  The other line clicked alive. “Hang up, David,” her mother said. The kitchen phone clicked off. “Well, you arrived safe and sound, then? Are you at the hotel?”

  “No, I’m still at Grand Central Station. It’s—”

  “Terminal, dear. It’s Grand Central Terminal. Please be precise, Laura. Women of good breeding are always precise.”

  Laura inhaled sharply. “Of course,” she mumbled. She wanted to tell her mother that being precise wasn’t what counted, what was important. Right now what was important was to be downstairs in the Oyster Bar, sipping a Tom Collins, making witty conversation with a traveling salesman from St. Louis who thought she was the most fascinating and sophisticated girl ever and had never heard of Greenwich, Connecticut, and never, ever wanted to go there.

  But she couldn’t and knew she wouldn’t. One wrong word and she’d be back in Greenwich overnight. And the next time she may never get out.

  “Remember, Aunt Marjorie and I will be down in two weeks to take you shopping for the rest of your wardrobe,” Marmy was saying. “We can’t have you working on Lexington Avenue appearing anything less than your very best.”