By Bruce Klauber
Robert Ruffalo, proprietor of Atlantic City’s iconic Princeton Antiques Bookshop, a veritable treasure trove of Jersey Shore books and memorabilia, recently called with an exciting new discovery. Ruffalo happened upon the Official Souvenir Program for the 1922 Atlantic City Pageant.
This is an incredible piece of history for a couple of reasons: The 1922 Atlantic City Pageant was actually the second Miss America Pageant, but the “Miss America” title, coined earlier that year, wasn’t widely used until much later. Indeed by 1933, the event was still being called the “Atlantic City Pageant,” though the words, “The Coronation of Miss America Pageant,” do appear in small letters at the bottom of the program’s cover. But more importantly, this fascinating little piece of history shows just how much the city, and its people, have evolved over 102 years.
The opening paragraph of the foreword to this 84-page program book is worth noting:
“Atlantic City is the world’s premier playground. In the charms of novelty and everlasting variety, it surpasses the most celebrated of European watering places. Not even the famed Brighton of England, the chateau region of Switzerland, the bath districts of Carlsbad, not the beautiful Mediterranean with its Monte Carlo, Nice and Naples compare with it in popularity, comfort, pleasure, and health-giving qualities, the four seasons through.
“It is the marine metropolis, a city of surprises. As a pleasure and health resort, Atlantic City is without parallel. It justly merits the encomiums bestowed by the millions of visitors who have been charmed by its varied allurements. It is truly ‘The Playground of the world.’”
The three-day event ran from Sept. 6 through Sept. 8, and those three days were chock full of celebrations, contests, rolling chair parades, tournaments and all else. On opening day, starting at 9 a.m., the event kicked off with a golf tournament held at the Atlantic City and Linwood country clubs. At 10:20, an automobile run to Atlantic City from Camden began, followed by the arrival of King Neptune at the Inlet’s Atlantic City Yacht Club, a race of flying boats, a diving exhibition, an exhibition tennis match, a soccer match for the Championship of South Jersey, a handicapped boat race, and a swimming competition between lifeguards that took place around the Steel Pier. And that only covered the morning and afternoon!
The evening’s festivities included a concert at Garden Pier, presentations to the winners of the afternoon’s contests, and in the Trellis Room of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, the American Beauty Reception and Ball.
The “beauty” part of the pageant began in earnest at 8:15 p.m. on Thursday at the Steel Pier. This segment of the festivities was called the “National Beauty Tournament,” where “selected beauties from the 57 competitive cities (note, the contestants back then represented cities rather than states) will be judged in evening costume and prizes awarded.”
The following evening, also at the Steel Pier, was the “final judging of the nine winners of the three beauty divisions of the Bathers Revue,” with the categories being amateur, professional and inner-city for first, second, and third place in each division.
The grand finale, which took place later that evening at Million Dollar Pier, was described as the “selection and crowning of America’s Most Beautiful Bathing Girl, and presentation of the $5,000 grand prize: The Golden Mermaid, presented by King Neptune.” There’s no specific criteria listed as to exactly how winners were chosen, though it’s pretty clear that the bathing suit competition was the most important. As the program stated:
“Arrayed in the most becoming of bathing suits, one will see numbers of the beauties that are so well known to us all. The last division is the one that interests everyone the most. Here will be seen America’s most beautiful girls in bathing costume. As they march down the beach, they will be judged by thousands, and here the decision of the crowds, expressed by applause, will have much to do with deciding who shall be declared America’s Most Beautiful Girl for 1922.”
And yes, there were judges as well, and the list, for the time, was quite impressive. Among them were artists Norman Rockwell, Howard Chandler Christy and Joseph Cummings Chase; Vogue and Vanity Fair magazine Arts Editor Heyworth Campbell, theatrical producer Lee Shubert, film actress Anita Stewart, and the one and only Florenz Ziegfeld of the “Ziegfeld Follies” fame. It’s interesting to note that, in a competition for “America’s Most Beautiful Girl for 1922,” there was only one woman among the judges, not surprising for the time.
Naturally, the program itself is filled with paid advertisements, and some of those advertisers are still in business today. Lucky Strike cigarettes, Coca Cola, Colgate, Coty Perfumes, James Salt Water Taffy, Yellow Taxicab, Oldsmobile, Breyers, and Wawa Dairy Farms are still very much with us in some way, shape or form.
The winner of the 1922 pageant was Mary Catherine Campbell Townley, who also won the following year, becoming the only contestant to win the pageant twice. She competed for the third time in 1924 and made it to first runner-up.
Her boyfriend got the whole ball rolling when he submitted a picture of Campbell to the pageant while she was a student at East High School in Columbus, Ohio. It wasn’t revealed until sometime later that Campbell was only 16 when she was crowned. She lied about her age in order to get into the competition.
As a result of all the notoriety, Campbell received offers to make movies, to appear in two Broadway shows, and to become a Ziegfeld Girl. But her mother didn’t allow her daughter to accept any of those offers, though she did permit her daughter to sing “My Buddy” on the B.F. Keith vaudeville circuit for three weeks.
She went on to attend Ohio State University as an art major, and later went to Ohio Wesleyan University. She was the first Miss America winner to attend college. Now that was progress.
Bruce Klauber is the author of four books, an award-winning music journalist, concert and record producer and publicist, producer of the Warner Brothers and Hudson Music “Jazz Legends” film series, and performs both as a drummer and vocalist.
