PF's History of Pageant Films

Former 80's pageant princess here (Miss Teen of Illinois contestant, 1987). While reviewing the VHS tapes of my own (less than) shining teenage moment, I pondered larger budget productions featuring the primp & circumstance of the pageant world.

Though few pop right into the brain- Drop Dead Gorgeous, Miss Congeniality, Miss Congeniality 2, and who can forget the super sexy Little Miss Sunshine- beauty pageants have been inspiring celluloid comedies, dramedies, teledramedies and docutelecomdramedies since the silent era.



Louise Brooks' first film was a silent comedy mocking the beauty queen scene, The American Venus (1926). Real-life Miss America, Fay Lanphier, even made a cameo appearance. Ask your great-great-grandma about it!
In Ella Cinders (1926), we are first introduced to the scam pageant of broken dreams. Don't worry, she makes it to Hollywood anyway!



The 30's were rich with good-time beauty contest flicks: Buster Keaton's Elmer Butts wooed Gopher City Kansas' aspiring Tinsel Town queen, Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page), in Free and Easy (1930), Lulu Brooks gave it another shot in Prix de Beaute (1934), Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell sassed it up as carnies-turned-chorus-girls in the contest-fixing classic Miss Pacific Fleet (1935), comedienne Marion Davies spoofed it up as a bumpkin maid transformed into the living version of a fictional ad campaign queen in Page Miss Glory (1935), the "Miss Pineapple Princess" pageant reigned in Bing Crosby's Waikiki Wedding (1937), and Busby Berkeley undoubtedly made Fast and Furious (1939) extremely fancy, even by beauty queen standards.



Apparently that was enough tiara-and-formal-wear funniness to last straight through to the 50's, where we saw a slight revival of cinematic pageantry.
1950 brought both a rare pageant drama with Beauty on Parade, and Peggy, most hilarious for Rock Hudson's portrayal of a character named Scat. Yeah, I'll bet.



Joan Collins made her film debut in a little number called Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951) that featured an ever-popular "suspect" beauty contest (And a non-nude Lady Godiva. Booo!). The decade wrapped up with the most promising of the 50's beauty fair farces, I Married a Woman (1958), a hoot that reunited former winners of the Miss Luxenberg Beer Beauty Contest only to find them pregnant or fat from beer-drinking. Still a competition I'd pay to watch.

The Beauty Jungle AKA 'Contest Girl' (1965) showcases the ugly side of these spectacles. What? I'll never believe it!

A little sexual revolution meant a couple things for the world of pageants films. The feminist angle was popular satire fodder, as in the brilliant TV movie, The Great American Beauty Contest (1973). Farrah Fawcett played the non-feminist and the tele-gem taught us that even the boringest of feminazis wants to be recognized for facial and bodily loveliness. Could pageant flick nudity be far behind? Nuh-uh.



Carry On Girls (1973) worked the women's lib shtick with a group of anti-flesh-peddling contest saboteurs, while simultaneously being the first offer up some tangible pageant movie skin in the form of a nipslip-tastic contestant cat fight between Margaret Nolan and Barbara Windsor. Tops off to you, my sisters!



As a former stranger-than-fiction teen scholarship pageant participant, no film captures the heart, soul, humor and weirdness of the whole debacle for me the way Smile (1975) does. Both were darling and endearing, slightly perverted and dark, mildly awkward and sad, but ultimately worth every second. From the judges, promoters, parents and pit band musicians who had learned to settle for less in life, to the innocent and not-so-innocent Young American Miss scholarship hopefuls who had so much to learn..Oh what am I saying? You get to ogle the buoyant pre-babyfeeders of a very young Melanie Griffith (as well as the teen tails of Colleen Camp and Joan Prather).

The sexually free 70's also provided two documentaries that recorded extraordinary pageants, Miss Nude America (1976) and I Wanna Be a Beauty Queen AKA 'Alternative Miss World' (1979). The former being a behind-the-behind-scenes-look at a birthday suit-baring Midwestern tradition, the latter a South London unisex procession of outrageousness in all shapes and sizes emceed by goddess of queens, Divine, and featuring contestants like Miss Carriage and Miss Slightly Misanthropic.

1977 belched up a nice dumb airplane-hijackers-holding-pageant-finalists-hostage clunker staring Victoria Principal, The Night They Took Miss Beautiful.

17-year-old Diane Lane and former Miss America contestant, Cloris Leachman (seriously), starred in the 1982 tele-drama, Miss All-American Beauty. An innocent, beautiful and talented young thing jumped into the Texas pageant scene for the scholarship cash, unprepared for the fast-paced fake world of press and nonsense. Unfortunately, she kept her clothes on, but teen Lane had already bared her all-American beauties as punk princess Corinne 'Third Degree' Burns in Ladies and Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains. Stains, indeed.

The 1985 produced a couple pag-docs as well. Miss or Myth covered the protests of the Miss California pageant. Yawn. Actually, some great points were made regarding the narrow parameters of perceived beauty. Which brings us to the second documentary, Pumping Iron II: The Women. PI II raised public skinterest in hot two-time Ms. Olympia, Rachel McLish,, while giving validation to female bodybuilders and their fetishists everywhere. Good show, muscle queens!

Miss Firecracker (1989) allowed Holly Hunter to parade around in her dainties for a spell. And that's about all I can say about that.

Ever wonder what would have happened if Bosom Buddies made a movie about infiltrating a beauty pageant as female make-up artists hiding from the mob in 1992? Me either, but it kind of happened anyway (obviously Hank and Scolari-less)! In The Naked Truth, Shelley Michelle as Miss Honduras is hardly a drag as she gives us frontal and backal while wiggling out of a tight dress into a tighter one. When former Miss USA, Courtney Gibbs delivers glimpses of bosom and butty in the bubble bath, no amount of scrubbing will clean you dirty mind.

Indestructible former child star Corey Feldman signed on for a beauty contest flick himself. I'm sure Round Trip to Heaven (1992) has a well-developed complex plot, but more importantly, the ladies love to flash flesh for Feldman: Rowanne Brewer, Brittney Powell, Amy Rochelle, and Denise Zakovic all begged to be Breast in Show. Powell kicked it up a notch going totally nude, Zakovic busted out beauty booty and Rochelle took one for the team with a Feldman sex scene. Even Kristine Rose and Julie McCullough modeled mouth-watering 'why bother?' lingerie. Everyone's a winner!

Gene Simmons' babymama, former Playboy centerfold Shannon Tweed, as a sexy action heroine opposite Andrew Dice Clay as da bad guy and Chandra West as Miss Germany not quite tearing down that wall in a black bra and panties= big trouble for the Miss Galaxy competition in No Contest (1994).

TV Crime/mystery/comedy Crowned and Dangerous (1997) indulged our need for Former Baywatch beaute, Yasmine Bleeth, to be very sexy, push up plenty o' cleavage and be involved in lots of making-out.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) wished it were Smile. I wished Amy Adams' first movie role was rewritten to add lesbian scenes with Kirsten Dunst.

What would Y2K bring to the glitz and glam world of pageant pictures? Sally Field directed Minnie Driver in Beautiful (2000). I directed my eyes to Kathleen Robertson's panties and Bridgette Wilson's bra.

In Miss Congeniality (2000) and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous (2005), Sandra Bullock worked her much-hotter-than-the-girl-next-door appeal as FBI agent Gracie Hart without a-pealing a darn thing off.

Oscar-winning dramedy, Little Miss Sunshine (2006) made be fresh in your head, but no matter how provocative Grandpa's (Alan Arkin) choreography was for Olive (Abigail Breslin), you will be banished to Nim's Island- ALONE- for even thinking it. Shame on you.