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We continue our look back today at the evolving history of The Miss America Pageant during the ever changing era of the 1954 to 1970 time period. Today, part 2 of our 4 part tribute, with a focus on the 1959 Miss America Pageant and its new star, Mary Ann Mobley. Miss Mobley would go on to a fine career in the 1960s on television (many guest starring roles, and was the original ‘The Girl From UNCLE’), as well as feature films, including one with Elvis Presley.
Every once in a while we reach a milestone in television, and American pop culture, that beacons us to take a pause and reflect. That’s what we will be doing this Labor Weekend as we introduce a four-part special on the 100th Anniversary of the Miss America Pageant.
The Miss America Pageant for years, for decades, was the main event that helped to kick off each fall television season in September. Only until recently (in the past decade or so) did the pageant move to airing on broadcast television (or cable television) early (or earlier) in the calendar year. For decades it aired right after Labor Day, sometime around the second week in September, ‘live, from Atlantic City, New Jersey’, leading to the start of the new fall season in the third week in September.
This year, 2020, marks the one hundredth anniversary of The Miss America Pageant, and although the pageant for 2020 has already taken place earlier this year (pre-COVID-19), and the next pageant may not take place until post-COVID-19, we here at Television Vanguard felt it was important to try to share some sort of tribute to this national institution that at one time was ‘a really big thing’, particularly in that 1954 to 1970 era when television viewership and importance was growing by leaps and bounds.
Note that this video clip is an excerpt from a PBS special back in the 1990s, and was produced as a special for PBS under the American Experience program. At the end of this part 2 clip is information on ordering full programs for The American Experience. Although this VHS-taped content from the 1990s is somewhat vintage now, we do believe PBS and the American Experience programming is still available online, if not at that 1-800 number.
This video clip is presented here on YouTube for the entertainment and informational value of the viewer, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Enjoy.
Part 3 tomorrow as the pageant enters the the 1960s, and America welcomes a new era in the Miss America Pageant with high ratings and great popularity. The ‘debutant period’ of the pageant would begin, and one of our personal favorite Miss Americas – Nancy Fleming, Miss Michigan of 1962 is shown in this clip. Ms. Fleming would go on to have a career in the television industry, and worked in television in the San Francisco Bay Area on KGO-TV in the 1970s. She would have her own talk show for KGO and would be married for years to a terrific guy, Jim Lange, whom Ms. Fleming met at KGO, and who is well known to many television fans as the original host of ABC’s The Dating Game (please see our Television Vanguard archive for more information on The Dating Game, Jim Lange, and producer Chuck Barris.)..(read more at source)
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