A Compendium of Miss Flatbushes

The finalists for 1930’s Miss Flatbush competition line up at the Kenmore theater on Church Ave. (now a Target store).

Beauty pageants — whether you love them, hate them, or have a nuanced view that they objectify women but also allow many women to take advantage of opportunities that they would not otherwise have access to in a world that is going to objectify them anyway — you have to admit they’re a huge part of feminine American history. And so of course, they’re a part of Flatbush history as well. The first “Miss Flatbush” I’m able to find reference to was Dixie Hines, who in 1925 was part of a troupe of “Bathing Beauties” run by a man in the Rockaways. In the summer of 1925, the Brooklyn Standard Union reported, “During the recent weeks when pageants ran through the famous peninsula like an epidemic, these comely girls were in great demand.”

The next year, a Miss Flatbush by the name of Ethel Smith went up against other neighborhood women like Miss Bedford and Miss Nassau to win the title Goddess of Transportation at a auto show held at the Bedford Armory. A true hottie with a fashionable 1920s bob, she later won a trip to Bermuda from a local radio station’s “popularity contest.” Sadly, Smith had an easier time winning freedom through pageants than through the court system — when she tried to divorce her husband in 1932, the Brooklyn Times Union reported that the judge “reserved decision.” Believe it or not, New York State did not have no-fault divorces until 2010 (that is not a typo). So when Smith accused her husband of cruelty, he countered that she needed compliments all the time because she was so hot, that she didn’t enjoy cleaning, and that “she is always on the go.” I couldn’t find mention of the judge ever granting her the divorce.

Through the 1950s, beauty pageants were often used as publicity stunts for various brands. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle even sponsored its own beauty pageant, with its writer describing 1952’s underage winner as “lovely, sun-tanned Lorraine Hodges, 17, a lass of medium height and more-than-medium curves.” Local movie theaters, including the Century and Kenmore, also held “Miss Flatbush” competitions. To enter, you usually just had to drop off a photo of yourself for the old man managing the theater. If he thought you were hot, he invited you to parade around on stage.

The most famous Miss Flatbush of all time has gotta be Gloria Pall, who said she won the title in 1947. Pall felt that a fantastic body = fantastic power, and quickly found work as a model and TV actress after moving to Los Angeles. In 1954 (in true Flatbush fashion) she talked her way into a job introducing late-night movies on the same local channel as horror host Vampira — but Pall wasn’t a ghoul introducing horror films, she was a sexy lady introducing romance movies. Known as “Voluptua,” she was so racy that the FCC complained and she got canned after only seven weeks. But she found success in B movies, as a pin-up girl, and in the 1957 movie Jailhouse Rock, where her legs framed Elvis’s face in the famous photo still. Before her death in 2013, did a great interview with NPR station KPCC, where she described her post-pageant ambition like: “I want to be a love goddess, and I want to be a sex goddess, and I want to be everything I was meant to be.”