You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss (4 page)

How did Miss America happen? I don’t know the behind-the-scenes machinations. So I asked George Miserlis, an actor, friend, and former Syracuse classmate to fill me in on the details. All I remember is that during my sophomore year as a musical theater major at Syracuse University, I was being watched. One night, I sang “The Second Time Around” during a school production of
Swingin’ on a Star!
, a revue of the works of composer Jimmy Van Heusen (who actually came to watch the show). And this is what happened—according to George:

George’s friend Bill Harmand was on the board of Miss Greater Syracuse, a preliminary round of Miss America. He wanted to see the fall review at Syracuse because the cast members are considered some of the most talented students at the university. (Aaron Sorkin, the Emmy- and Academy Award–winning screenwriter, was also cast in this small musical.)

After the show, George went up to Bill, who looked as if he were holding in a big secret, his eyes bulging out of his head.

“You look weird,” George said. “Did you like the show or not?”

Bill shrugged his shoulders. “How well do you know this Vanessa?”

“What do you mean, ‘this Vanessa’?”

Bill told George that he thought I had what it took to go all the way to Miss America. He wanted to present me to the board of directors at an informal party.

George told me about what Bill had said, but I didn’t answer right away. “Let me think about it,” I said.

The next day after jazz class, I went up to George and asked for Bill’s number. I still wasn’t convinced that this was something I wanted to pursue. Me—a beauty queen? I don’t think so!

But Vicki Longley, the director of the Miss Greater Syracuse pageant, came to visit me, and she was persistent. Vicki was a blond, exuberant woman in her thirties. She knew everything there was to know about pageants. It was her calling, her passion. She’d done the circuit herself, and was also an entrepreneur. She owned a catering company and knew a lot about fine cuisine. She lived in a Tudor home with wall-to-wall ivory carpeting. She was like the Martha Stewart of Syracuse.

Last year, Vicki had scouted the Syracuse opera singer who had won Miss Greater Syracuse and went on to compete in Miss New York.

This year I was her obsession.

I was not a pageant girl. I was an actor, just cast as the Orange Girl in
Cyrano de Bergerac
at Syracuse Stage, a repertory company on campus. The part was not a lead, but would award me some points toward an Actors’ Equity card, which is the track to being a professional on the Broadway stage. One more step closer to the path of Meryl.

I loved Meryl Streep. My first acting teacher, Phil Stewart, turned
me on to her. I watched all her movies, studied her dialects, and marveled at her expressions. Her accents were impeccable and she was ethereal. I wanted to follow in her footsteps. So that was the plan—major in musical theater at Syracuse, junior year abroad in London, graduate from Syracuse with a BFA, head to Yale for postgraduate theater studies, and then on to Broadway.

But
Cyrano
was canceled, and now I was free in April. It was time to think about scholarship money for junior year.

Vicki
did
mention scholarship money.

If I won Miss Greater Syracuse, I’d earn five hundred dollars for school next year. I mentioned this to my mom, who was always applying for scholarships in dance, singing, and acting for me. Over the years I’d received money from various places—the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the Westchester County Chapter of Links, and Elejmal Temple.

Without missing a beat, Mom said, “Do it.”

Miss Greater Syracuse is the local step to Miss America, with the same competitions—talent, swimsuit, and evening gown. I figured talent would be a cinch—just sing a song from performance class. I had to do that weekly—no big deal. “The Music and the Mirror” from
A
Chorus Line
was a number that I could sing and dance to, so I would be able to showcase my talents. But then I thought,
Ehhh… too much effort.

“Being Good Isn’t Good Enough” was a song I’d been assigned in performance class. Leslie Uggams sang it in the Broadway musical
Hallelujah, Baby!
The song contained the lyrics, “I’ll be the best or nothing at all.” It had a strong, beautiful melody and I knew that no one had done it in the competition before. I’d just belt it out and “lift that cloud.” (That’s what Brent Wagner, the head of the musical theater department, would have us imagine when we raised our arms during the end of the number.)

I bought an aqua-blue one-piece bathing suit with black piping
at Sibley’s, a downtown Syracuse department store. Then a group of us headed to the auditorium for Miss Greater Syracuse. I told my parents not to bother making the long drive up because it was not a big deal. Tim Thayer, my friend and mentor, accompanied me on the piano. I had my core group of friends in the audience, ready for a good laugh and, of course, ready to be rowdy and cheer me on.

And then, lo and behold, I actually won the damn thing!

We celebrated with cold Rolling Rocks back at the railroad apartment Bruce and I shared. I spent more time there than my Grover Cleveland dorm room. We passed my silver tray around so everyone could read the inscription: vanessa williams, miss greater syracuse, 1983.

I called my parents.

“Guess what… I won!” I told my mom.

“That’s terrific! How much money did you get?”

Vicki went into production mode to prepare me for the state’s Miss New York pageant. “Now let’s practice interviews,” Vicki would say. Then she’d turn on a tape recorder as she asked me questions. “Did you hear how many times you said, ‘um,’ or ‘you know’?”

She even made me sing into a wooden spoon in her living room. Wow! For anyone who’s a seasoned pro on stage, the wooden spoon gag is pretty humiliating. But I sucked it up and did it for Vicki.

Vicki once took me to a fine French restaurant—I’m sure to check out my table manners, which my parents had taught me well. She introduced me to local designer Eugene Taddeo, who added more clothes to my wardrobe for the trip to the “States.”

Then it was off to Miss New York. You’d probably assume the pageant would take place in Manhattan, but you’d be wrong. It’s held in Watertown, New York. Way up at the top of New York State, bordering Canada by the Thousand Islands. (That’s where
Thousand Island salad dressing originated.) And that’s where I headed in July for the next leg of my beauty pageant circuit, armed with my Miss Greater Syracuse sash and my crown in its wooden box.

And what do you know—I won that, too!

I was happy about it.
Money!
A few thousand for my semester abroad! But here we go again: What’s my role? What are my duties?

When I won Miss New York, I had no idea what that meant and what it entailed. Soon I found myself at parades in the farm belt. I’d sit in a car, waving at tractors and cows. I was thinking,
Shouldn’t I be in a show right now? I always do theater in the summer.
But I saw this as a temporary interruption from doing what I loved. This was just a little detour and then I’d be back on track to Broadway.

Now don’t get me wrong—I’m no city slicker. I grew up in a small town and I loved rural living. We had family friends who owned a farm where we’d visit, drive tractors, collect eggs, the whole works. But me waving at tractors? It was an out-of-body experience. I considered it my job for the summer. The year before, I’d worked at a model registry; this year, I was waving in small-town parades.

Besides appearing at parades, luncheons, and county fairs, I had to pick out material for the dresses I’d wear in the Miss America pageant. Vicki was still in charge and went over every aspect of the pageant circuit—the competitions, the way to walk, the way to turn at the end of the runway and look at the judges. She prepped me on questions I’d probably be asked during the interview session with the judges.

Even though I’d won the talent portion at Miss New York with “Being Good Isn’t Good Enough,” Vicki suggested a different song—Barbra Streisand’s arrangement of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

“People aren’t familiar with your song, but everyone knows ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ It’s important to pick a song the
judges have heard before,” she explained. I listened to it and knew I could nail it.

Vicki would conduct more mock interviews at her kitchen table. “What’s your favorite book? Movie? TV show?” She’d tape it, then hit rewind and play it back for me. I still said “um” and “you know” too much, she told me.

She would add her two cents, guide me through what she’d do or say, but I never was given any of that processed patter that so many beauty contestants have. I did ask for her help on one question that I had no idea how to answer: “Why is it necessary to have a swimsuit competition?”

She told me to say something like, “A fit body reflects a fit mind.”

I loved the perks that came with winning—one of which was free clothes. You would think Miss New York would go to Madison Avenue and pick out Halston gowns (I ended up getting an original Halston gown when I met the designer at my first state dinner at the White House as Miss America). Instead I headed to Ursula of Switzerland in Schenectady, New York, where the gowns and dresses were dipped in sequins and chiffon and had puffy sleeves and asymmetrical hemlines. Not my personal style but fit for a queen.

My mom, Vicki, and I would also shop at fabric stores in New York City’s garment district. Vicki chose the colors I should wear and told me what to avoid. “You can’t wear reds or purples—those are too ethnic,” she said.

I did wear a red sheath gown for the parade on the Boardwalk and in the Miss America portrait. But we settled mostly on light tones: a pale lavender gown and a nude-colored sparkly gown, as well as an aqua-sequined gown—to make my eyes pop—with two enormous rosettes on the shoulders. Vicki picked everything. She’d sketch her designs on paper and then start on the original creations. Even the outfits she didn’t design, she bedazzled. We picked out my
evening gown at Sibley’s, the department store from which I had purchased my bathing suit for Miss Greater Syracuse. It was an ivory Grecian dress. Very understated. Vicki studded it with crystals. She loved accoutrements. I think she thought that everything looked better when it sparkled.

Escorted by my chaperone, Lynn Caterson, I was the first contestant to arrive in Atlantic City, which got me unintended press. It was Sunday, September 11, and all was abuzz for the fifty-ninth Miss America pageant.

There was a lot of nervous energy in the Convention Center, as it began to fill up with girls who were “homegrown for pageants,” as my mom put it. There were girls who had starved themselves, girls who had practiced the same routines since they were children, girls who’d been coached by their moms since birth, and girls who’d been in hundreds of pageants. There were only a handful of us first-timers. We found one another, stuck together, and bonded over our rookie status. We were naive and ready to have fun.

On Saturday, the night of the televised pageant, we opened with a song, “Go for It All.” I had on a white knitted two-piece top and skirt with leg-of-mutton sleeves. Vicki had dotted the entire ensemble with Swarovski crystals.

I guess Vicki had missed the memo that there were to be no sparkles for the opening number. Well, Wanda Gayle Geddie, Miss Mississippi, who’d been in the pageant circuit forever, gave me the news: “You can’t wear that. Don’t you know? Sparkles in the opening number are forbidden.”

I didn’t know.

So Vicki quickly devised a solution. She pushed the crystals through the fabric so they couldn’t be seen. Problem solved. Competition noted.

Wanda thought she could rattle me, but her plan didn’t work. She wound up in fourth place.

Until I arrived for the pageant, I’d never been to Atlantic City. I knew about the Boardwalk and saltwater taffy from watching the pageant as a kid. On television, the pageant seemed so spectacular, but the reality was very different. It was a mom-and-pop operation run primarily by volunteers who were mostly Atlantic City housewives and business folk. It was not a big, well-oiled machine like most people assumed.

The Atlantic City Convention Center, where the pageant took place, was a neo-Romanesque building constructed in 1929. It was a big old barn of a place with an enormous arched roof, 137 feet high. I don’t remember it feeling glitzy or glamorous. It had worn carpets, huge chandeliers, burgundy and gold drapes, booming acoustics, and that Boardwalk scent—a mix of seawater, mold, and mildew.

Miss America didn’t have a huge staff. All fifty contestants did their own hair and makeup in a big room filled with folding tables and mirrors. I brought my heated roller set, a big can of hair spray, and my palette of Fashion Fair cosmetics (the only makeup made exclusively for black women at the time). My chaperone helped me through the chaos to get ready for the live telecast. She grabbed me, attacked my head with spray, and then scrunched my hair with her fingers. Who was this person with the perky hairdo staring back at me in the mirror? I’d never scrunched my hair that tight, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

Before we got to Saturday night’s live telecast, we went through the other preliminary rounds to determine the top ten contestants. The first night of the competition was on Wednesday. I won swimsuit. Cool. Thursday was evening gowns. It wasn’t a competition, so no pressure. Friday was talent. I sang “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It felt great. I hit all the notes. Nailed it. Wowed the crowd. The judges liked it, too—because I won. The odds were if you win both swimsuit and talent competitions, you win the crown. But
still, I had my doubts. I thought,
Okay, at least I’ll make it into the top ten.
And I did.

The final televised pageant was a dizzying blur—I barely knew what was going on around me. It was night number four and millions were watching at home. My nightly cheering section from New York, who always made me feel great each time I stepped onto the stage, was there in full force.