Bess Myerson was crowned Miss America in 1945, but often complained that the prestigious title was a hurdle she had to overcome throughout her career. Myerson’s life as a television personality and consumer affairs activist was filled with struggles and scandals, but public records confirmed Monday reveal that she died in relative obscurity on Dec. 14 in Santa Monica, Calif. at the age of 90.

Myerson was a New York house painter’s daughter who graduated from the High School of Music and Art in 1941 and Hunter College in 1945. While in school, she began to model to earn pocket money. She won the Miss New York City pageant before entering the Miss America contest in 1945, which she ended up winning thanks to her performance in the talent portion, where she played a piano concerto by Grieg and “Summertime” by Gershwin on flute. A few years after being crowned, she began appearing in television commercials regularly, and was a fixture on quiz shows such as The Big Payoff and I’ve Got a Secret.

The first and only Jewish Miss America, Myerson faced anti-Semitism numerous times throughout the beginning of her career, and was even encouraged by the Miss America pageant director to change her name to make it sound less Jewish.  Even after winning the crown, various country clubs canceled her visits and she struggled to keep her corporate sponsorships, as few companies wanted a Jewish Miss America to endorse their products.

“I felt so rejected,” Myerson once said. “Here I was, chosen to represent American womanhood, and then America treated me like this.”

 

She became a spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League and lectured high school students about tolerance, preaching the message that “You can’t be beautiful and hate.” Her passion for public service continued to grow throughout her life, and in 1969, Mayor John V. Lindsay named her New York City’s commissioner of consumer affairs. Myerson went on to become Mayor Edward I. Koch’s commissioner of cultural affairs in the 1980s, was eventually given her own syndicated television show to discuss consumer affairs, and wrote columns on the topic for the New York Daily News and Redbook magazine.

Myerson’s name unfortunately became synonymous with scandal in the early 1980s, when she became the companion of married New York sewer contractor Carl A. “Andy” Capasso. When Capasso became involved in an ugly legal battle over alimony payments during his divorce, Myerson was accused of trying to influence Hortense W. Gabel – the judge in the divorce case – by giving his daughter a $19,000-per-year city job as her assistant in the Department of Cultural Affairs. Myerson, Capasso and Gabel were indicted for conspiracy, bribery and mail fraud in 1987, and while the jury acquitted the defendants of all charges in 1988, she made matters worse later that year by pleading guilty to shoplifting $44 in cosmetics and other goods while en route to visit Capasso in a Pennsylvania prison.

Despite her downward spiral in the public eye and the eventual reversal of her fortune, Myerson always insisted that she would be able to rise above whatever scandals were thrown her way.

“I’m like a phoenix,” she once told New York magazine. “I rise from the ashes.”