Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) (21 page)

Indeed, following Beck’s selection, he was a pageant-week fixture at Horn’s side during the festivities. Horn was being celebrated on the way out, but he was also introducing the guy on the way in. It was a necessary stamp of approval for an executive who would soon be alone at the helm of a giant and unwieldy corporation, particularly one with which he had no previous experience. Unfortunately for Rob Beck, Leonard Horn’s demonstration of support turned out to be woefully insufficient.

Beck’s tenure lasted only about a year. It would end with both literal and figurative hurricanes. Floyd barreled toward the Jersey Shore during pageant week, threatening to interrupt the festivities. Union Local 54 went on strike, knocking out all housekeeping and food service at the casino hotels. And a single proposed rule change infuriated many of the volunteers, turned the pageant into a national punch line, and generated a firestorm of questionable publicity.

But in the beginning, there was a great deal of excitement about having a new face around the office. One member of the board of directors (who wished to remain anonymous due to the confidential nature of board meetings) believed that Beck showed a great deal of promise. A year, however, is hardly an abundance of time to learn the ins and outs of an institution that is almost eighty years old.

Beck seemed to fall especially short when it came to understanding the nuances of both messaging and power. Early in his term, he floated the idea of publicizing the personal financial benefit of winning the Miss America title. At the time, in addition to her scholarships, the winner’s speaking fees quickly catapulted her from unknown college student into a member of the top 3 percent of American wage earners. Only a Miss America who had regularly experienced the expectations of the media and the public (those being, of course, that Miss America should probably be working for free) could argue that this was a poor idea. As the platform issue continued to occupy the front-and-center position on the list of MAO’s priorities, the last thing the pageant needed was to backslide into the kind of upper-class identity that could hike Miss America back onto her pedestal. Beck, however, seemed unconvinced that this would be more of a hindrance than an asset.

He also endeavored to increase the entertainment value of the televised talent competition, by informing the state organizations that backup singers, dancers, and other production elements would be added to what the contestants had prepared. Again, in theory, it’s completely plausible that his intentions were pure, and that he was just doing a little good old-fashioned outside-the-box thinking. It’s also staggeringly obvious that he had little to no grasp of the impact that these last-minute changes would likely have on the actual young women who were competing for Miss America. Although there are certainly some contestants whose stated career ambitions involve the entertainment industry—and a significantly smaller percentage who ever really make a living wage in show business—there are many, many more who haven’t taken dance classes since they went off to college, or who learn one song to sing at every pageant. To add last-minute “support” performers into a Broadway show is not a big deal; to try it with these non-professional artists (already under a great deal of pageant
week stress) would almost definitely have caused chaos, anguish, and enough tears to sink a cruise ship. And from a judging standpoint, it would have been an unnecessary distraction—especially if, say, a rogue backup dancer decided that the national TV exposure was a valid reason to pull focus.

This kind of thinking may have been symptomatic of what was to come in Beck’s term. As the first non-insider CEO since Al Marks began to grab the reins in 1952, his tenure illuminated that Miss America involves many nuances which are invisible to the inexperienced eye. But it was the kind of thing that any thinking person (which Beck undoubtedly was and is) could have learned over time. Although at least one board member would later publicly criticize Beck’s management style, there really aren’t many examples indicating that he had personality issues that caused clashes, especially as compared to Horn, or to some of the men who would succeed him in the CEO position. Ultimately, Rob Beck’s greatest transgression was trying to change too much, too fast, in an organization that would quickly demonstrate that it was seriously allergic to change.

Several months into his term, Beck began reviewing the Miss America contestant contract, with the help of pageant attorney Steven Perskie. The two men had an eye toward revising the document as a whole, rather than in the piecemeal fashion in which it had previously been amended. Perskie—who later became a Superior Court judge—reportedly became especially concerned about some of the New Jersey discrimination laws the pageant might run up against if a situation ever arose that required enforcement of certain clauses.

What hastened Beck’s departure, of course, was not a mere review of the contract, or his desire to avoid discrimination against potential contestants. It was that his proposed rule change would no longer prohibit women who
had been married or pregnant from entering the Miss America program. On its surface, the concept had merit: the Miss America Organization could have conceivably been confronted, at any time, with a legal battle from a potential contestant who had given birth after being a victim of rape or incest. In fact, MAO would soon face—and amicably resolve—a challenge from a sexually abused young woman in Oklahoma who had become pregnant, and ultimately had given the baby up for adoption. But Beck didn’t yet have that situation as ammunition to propel his initiative. When the press picked up the story, it was quickly and irrevocably framed as a move to allow divorced women and those who had had abortions to become Miss America.

With that kind of damage threatening the Miss America brand—the program that the volunteers had to sell to potential small-town sponsors as one that selected a role model for the nation each year—NAMASP sprang into action. In 1999 (while that year’s contestants were actually in Atlantic City, no less), they sued the pageant to block the rule change. Although Beck agreed to hold off on implementation for a year, the national media had picked up on the story. It made headlines across the country, and the Miss America Organization became “prime fodder for late night comedians” as a result. Beck was fired two weeks after the crowning of the new Miss America.

Beck filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the Miss America board of directors. In it, he claimed that he was fired without just cause. There was one more juicy detail in the case; his lawsuit accused Leonard Horn of colluding with board members to push him out of his job. Attorneys claimed that “the former CEO continued to hold sway over at least some members of the national board of directors and was instrumental in getting Beck fired . . . they sought to add Horn to the list of defendants because of ‘tortious interference with the contractual relationship of plaintiff (Beck) and his employer, the Miss America Or
ganization.’
” Although numerous board members were deposed, and Horn’s letter to Beck (in which he told his replacement that he “should be ashamed” of himself) was admitted as part of the court record, Horn never legally became a defendant in the case. It was ultimately resolved in 2003, when a New Jersey judge reportedly awarded Beck $80,000 in severance pay. But his problematic tenure, which wreaked havoc on all involved parties—and, more critically, on Miss America’s public image—had more than one lesson to offer those who would try to lead the organization in the future. To some extent, it was likely that Leonard Horn was still involved behind the scenes, and uninterested in allowing new leadership to dilute his legacy. Additionally, NAMASP was not to be trifled with, and was not afraid to air Miss America’s dirty laundry in the press, if an executive was threatening what NAMASP considered to be a cornerstone of its institution. This detail, in particular, would be an essential one for the pageant in the coming years.

With Rob Beck’s time as CEO over, the pageant moved quickly to select his successor; the pressure to put on an annual telecast doesn’t allow a lot of time for leadership squabbles or power vacuums. This time, the board stuck a little closer to home. In February 2000, they announced that they had found their man.

As the new head honcho, MAO chose Robert Renneisen, a Vietnam veteran with a journalism degree. Most recently, Renneisen had spent several years as CEO of Claridge Casino and Hotel. (That the Claridge declared bankruptcy around the same time they let him go was, apparently, not a deal breaker for the pageant. In hindsight, it probably should have been.)

Renneisen was a smooth operator: handsome, charming, the owner of a great sense of humor. He also had the confi
dence that came with having saved an Atlantic City institution from financial ruin; along with a section of Resorts International, the Claridge is still the only original hotel on the Boardwalk that hasn’t been demolished to make way for a shiny new casino.

The new boss had also apparently learned quite a bit from the very public fiasco of the preceding year. Almost immediately, he reassured the pageant faithful that he had only the best intentions regarding their sparkly, glamorous baby. He compared Miss America to cultural icons like the Washington Monument, and dismissed questions about revisiting the controversial contractual clauses that had gotten Rob Beck fired.

Renneisen also expressed a desire to substantially grow the pageant’s financial stability, in terms of both sponsorship and scholarship. What might have seemed like empty ambition from someone else seemed attainable for this CEO; Renneisen had rescued the Claridge from debt a few years earlier, to the tune of about $85 million. And he seemed deeply committed to the mission of the pageant, stating at the time that “if I can get five minutes with a senior educator or senior corporate executive, only five minutes so I can explain what this program does, their perceptions can be changed forever.”

It didn’t take him long to get started. By the fall, he had planned and initiated a “Five Minutes With Miss America” tour. Accompanied by the newly crowned Angela Perez Baraquio (2001), Renneisen logged plenty of miles courting potential corporate partners for Miss America, as well as attempting to dispel stereotypes about the organization. Although it was an interesting big-picture idea, the campaign was met with skepticism in some quarters. Perhaps as a result of insufficient advance work from the pageant office, the press seemed as interested in what Baraquio ate in those five minutes as in what she said. Some reporters implied that the pageant’s central message—and mission—
was confusing and conflicted. “For years, Miss America has dressed in swimsuits and then complained that Miss America is more than dressing in swimsuits,” noted the
San Francisco Chronicle
, adding that “her appearances are preceded by a pleading letter from her Miss America handlers.” Clearly, the new boss’s team had underestimated the scope of the task they were confronting, as well as the difficulty of raising capital for a nonprofit scholarship organization versus a revenue-producing casino hotel.

Meanwhile, Renneisen also set about reinventing Miss America from the inside out. The stubbornly mom-and-pop vibe of the organization was likely frustrating to him, especially when it served as a deterrent to the big business he was trying to attract. In what was presumably an effort to bring the pageant into the twenty-first century, he went on a hiring spree, adding several vice presidents to the payroll—some of whom were promoted from within, while some came from the business world; one was even a former volunteer state pageant director. Over a period of several months, the staff grew to include an executive vice president, a senior vice president of marketing, a director of field operations, and a public relations manager. Of course, so many new six-figure salaries also guaranteed that Miss America’s operating expenses would balloon. And they did, initiating a disturbing financial trend. In 2000, total functional expenses were $3,994,722, against $10,289,792 in assets and $2,923,238 in revenue. By 2002, however, it was reported that the pageant had “plunged $1 million into the red” and operating expenses had pushed the organization to the brink of insolvency. Never shy about chiming in, Leonard Horn continued to be at the top of the list when journalists needed quotes for their stories. He publicly complained about the whittling down of the $10 million reserve he had left behind, claiming that “the money that the pageant had is being thrown away.”

Like his predecessors, Renneisen looked to move the
pageant forward. But once again, repositioning an organization of MAO’s size and structure turned out to be a difficult job. His term—which lasted barely two years—was marked by choices widely criticized by Miss America’s network of volunteers and unflatteringly framed by the media. To his credit, Renneisen did take bold steps to attempt to reinvent the pageant’s image and shore the organization up financially. But unlike Rob Beck, whose questionable moves could be explained by a general lack of organizational experience and savvy, Renneisen had been around the pageant for a while. And as a former head of a major casino, he certainly knew the ins and outs of Atlantic City dealings. It’s difficult, therefore, to see how he could have failed to anticipate the surprise, and even hostility, that would greet some of his more memorable initiatives.

Like licensing a Miss America slot machine. From an objective standpoint, this may have seemed like a no-brainer; at that point, Atlantic City had been a casino town for two decades. The problem, though, is clear to anyone with a deeper understanding of Miss America’s relationship with its hometown: for most of those years, contestants were expressly forbidden to even set foot on the gaming floor in their pageant week host hotels. Even after the rules loosened in the late 1990s, one was about as likely to see a saltwater taffy ban on the Boardwalk as to witness any Miss State gambling in early September—at least until after the Saturday-night finals, after which all bets are customarily off, so to speak. It’s not that Miss America fans and officials find gambling inherently distasteful; plenty of them spend time in the casinos when they’re not occupied by preliminary competitions. But Miss America is not supposed to be like other mortals. And as incongruous as it is for many fans to imagine their favorite hopeful striving for triple 7’s instead of getting her beauty sleep and exercising, it is altogether unconscionable that she might be trying to hit triple Phyllis Georges.