Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 5, 2015

Bess Myerson, the former beauty queen, television personality and New York politician who spent four decades in the public eye before her glamorous image was tarnished by scandal, has died. She was 90.

Myerson died Dec. 14 at her home in Santa Monica. The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office confirmed her death, which was not publicly announced.

Myerson was an aspiring pianist in 1945 when she became the first Jewish Miss America and a symbol of ethnic pride for Jews emerging from the brutal realities of World War II. She went on to a career as a game show hostess and panelist before entering political life in the 1960s.

As consumer affairs commissioner in the administration of New York Mayor John V. Lindsay, she successfully crusaded for such reforms as unit pricing and open dating of perishable foods, early victories in the consumer protection movement of the 1970s.

Alternately regal and folksy, she became one of the most powerful women in New York politics, credited as a driving force behind the electoral success of Mayor Edward I. Koch in 1977.

Later, she was forced to resign as Koch's cultural affairs commissioner when she was accused of bribery and conspiracy to influence the divorce case of a multimillionaire sewer contractor who was her boyfriend. She was acquitted of all charges after a four-month trial in 1988, but she never returned to public life.

She overcame ovarian cancer, a stroke and the breakup of two marriages while struggling with issues of family and career years before the women's movement made such balancing acts acceptable.

Myerson "aspired to be more than just a beauty queen, and she succeeded like no other before or since," New York journalist Jennifer Preston wrote in "Queen Bess," a 1990 biography.

A complex woman whose erratic behavior sometimes mystified those closest to her, she rebuffed efforts to peg her as an early feminist.

"When someone says to me, 'You're a forerunner of the women's movement,' I say that is bull ..." Myerson said in 1982. "I worked my butt off. I had to survive."

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Bess Myerson, Miss America who turned to politics and scandal, dies at 90

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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