Week of January 16: There She Is, Again

By Sylvia Gurinsky

If Miss America hasn't quite regained her mid-20th century glory, she has returned successfully to network television.

For the third straight year, ABC has televised the pageant to good ratings - the best since 2004 for this year's event, which took place in Las Vegas.

Miss America, created in Atlantic City in 1921, was a major symbol of the American woman when the first televised pageant took place Sept. 11, 1954 on ABC. Appropriately, the first televised winner - Lee Meriwether - has since compiled an impressive TV resume, including co-starring on the CBS series "Barnaby Jones" and playing the second Ruth Martin on ABC's "All My Children."

About four and a half minutes into this "What's My Line" clip from September, 1954, Meriwether appears with her Miss America crown:

Lee Meriwether

The pageant was also the first for Bert Parks, best known as a game show host at the time. His songs could often be corny, but he became best known for the song he sang for a just crowned Miss America: "There She Is, Miss America" (which, alas, is no longer played for the winner).

Miss America had its first color telecast on NBC in 1966. But the pageant, which began to struggle during the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the women's rights movement and changing demographics, fired Parks in 1979. Amid much of the criticism, "Tonight Show" host Johnny Carson staged a tongue-in-cheek protest in support of Parks. Gary Collins (husband of 1959 Miss America Mary Ann Mobley) and Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford (a one-time America's Junior Miss competitor) have been among the subsequent hosts. In 1991, in honor of the pageant's 70th anniversary, Parks came back to join Collins and sing his trademark one last time before his 1992 death:

There She Is

Mallory Hytes Hagan, last week's winner, became the third Miss America from New York, joining two trailblazers: Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America (1945) and Vanessa Williams, the first African-American, crowned in 1984:

Vanessa Williams

Williams gave up her title to New Jersey's Suzette Charles, also African-American, as a result of a scandal in which nude pictures of her were published in "Penthouse" magazine. But Williams has gone on to have a successful singing and television career in such shows as "Ugly Betty" and "Desperate Housewives."

It is still a talent and scholarship pageant that continues to generate new generations of television faces. And thanks to its renewed popularity, Miss America will be there, on our TV screens, for a while.

See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!