ROGER SIMON COLUMN
AUGUST 29, 2005
WASHINGTON - - In 1979, I was a judge at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.
My fellow judges included Gavin McLeod, who was the captain on "The Love Boat" and had played Murray Slaughter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Jerry Vale, a famous singer (who got all the judges in to see his pal Frank Sinatra, who was playing in Atlantic City) and Janet Langhart, who was then a prominent TV newsperson (and would later marry Secretary of Defense William Cohen.)
In other words: What was I doing there?
I still don't know. Maybe they had me confused with Roger Ebert. Or Roy Rogers. In any case, they asked me if I wanted to be a judge and I jumped at it.
At the time, the pageant was still a fairly big deal. Some 70 million Americans watched it that year. Last year, ABC dropped the show after only 9.8 million people tuned in, an all-time low.
And it was announced a few days ago that after 84 years, the Miss America pageant will leave Atlantic City in an attempt to revitalize itself. Former pageant executive Leonard Horn told a reporter, "They have no allegiance to Atlantic City whatsoever, other than nostalgia, and that doesn't pay the bills."
Although I haven't watched the show in years, I still feel nostalgic about it.
When I got to Atlantic City to be a judge, the organizers were shocked that I had not brought (and, in fact, did not own) a tuxedo.
On the night of the TV broadcast, Bert Parks would introduce each judge and you had to stand up and wave to the camera. And you had to have a tuxedo, apparently, to do that.
Gavin MacLeod owned several. Jerry Vale, I think, had been born in one.
So a pageant official drove me up and down the gritty side streets of Atlantic City that run parallel to the Boardwalk until we found a tuxedo shop. My rented tux did not fit very well and this added to my nervousness about the wave.
On the night of the pageant, MacLeod, a very nice guy, sat next to me in the judge's pit as we waited in the darkness for the show to begin.
"A left- or right-handed wave?" I asked him. "Wave the hand, the arm, what?" There were tiny beads of sweat on my forehead.
"I think," MacLeod said, looking at me, "that you need a pocket handkerchief!" And he whipped from his own breast pocket this incredibly beautiful, scarlet, Italian silk handkerchief and expertly tucked it into my own pocket.
I looked down at it. I felt transformed. And when it came my turn to wave, I calmly stood and did it. I have no idea if I did it left-handed or right-handed (I am pretty sure I used one or the other), but when I sat down MacLeod leaned over and gave me a big kiss on my forehead.
"A star," he said, "is born."
He refused to let me give the handkerchief back, and I have it still. Every year, I wear it to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, an event far more tedious than the Miss America pageant.
It is a little hard to explain what the pageant once meant to some people, but it meant a lot. So I now repeat one of my favorite, true stories:
On one of the preliminary nights of the pageant I was waiting for a hotel elevator with my big purple judge's badge fastened to my suit.
And I noticed I was standing next to an American legend, a man whose fame had been so great he had become a symbol for an entire era. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a young man approach him for an autograph.
He turned to give it, only to see the young man walk past him and stop in front of me.
"So whaddya think of Miss New Jersey?" the young man asked. "She gotta chance?"
The elevator came as I was making some neutral response.
And as the doors closed on him, I saw Joe DiMaggio smile a knowing smile.
Posted by rsimon at August 29, 2005 03:02 PM