How could i have left Bess Myerson out of my annals of Miss America? She was the most famous and celebrated of them all. She was the first Jewish Miss America, Miss New York (1945), star of TV panel shows and my childhood favorite, The Big Payoff, on which she regularly descended a long staircase in a full-length Teitelbaum mink while Randy Merriman sang A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. I was sort of in love with her. So, years later,was Ed Koch. She was frequently on the mayors arm and he made her his consumer affairs adviser. I believed in Bess Myerson and when i wrote a book called Who Put the Con in Consumer, my publisher asked her for a blurb for the cover. Her people got back to my people and said she would write one but wanted money! I was scandalized. Imagine that: demanding to be paid for writing something! I dont know how often publishers pay for plugs on book covers, but not my publisher, the hoary Book publisher Liveright. And she was a government official! Needless to say, the deal was off. Forever after, i studied Bess for evidence of corruption. And there was plenty--shoplifting charges, her scandalous relationship with sewer contractor Carl Capasso and the Hortense and Sukreet Gable scandal, to name three. These day, Bess is 90 years old, and is suffering from dementia in Santa Monica. When i think of her, i think of The Big Payoff.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:21:54 +0000
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