Morguey and Bess

Or

Bess this Mess

Bess Myerson, who broke up the shiksa hegemony of the world’s beauty pageants, then became Ed Koch’s beard, has died at the age of 90. Rising out of the Bronx to win Miss New York City, Myerson carried the hope of all Jews still dealing with the one-two punch of the Holocaust (if you believe in that kind of thing) and the anti-Semitic theory that they had dragged the country into war with her to Atlantic City where she won the 1945 pageant, the first that carried a scholarship for the winner. Her triumph was short-lived, as several pageant sponsors didn’t want a Jewish spokeswoman and many hotels and country clubs closed their doors to her, so many of her appearances were canceled. With her calendar cleared, she went on an anti-defamation crusade. TV was more forgiving, and she appeared on I’ve Got a Secret for 9 years, then became New York’s first consumer affairs advocate, where she helped push through the first regulation in the nation requiring retailers to post unit prices to make comparison shopping easier and helped recover millions of dollars for defrauded consumers. When Koch ran for mayor of New York, Myerson was always on his arm, fostering the idea that marriage might be in the offing and countering rumors that the lifelong bachelor was gay. Her favorite daughter image was tarnished when she started an affair with a married sewer contractor 21 years her junior that blossomed into an indictment on corruption charges. Though she was acquitted, her profile was decidedly lower from then on, and by the end she had become so obscure that it took 3 weeks for anyone to realize she was *that* Bess Myerson.