Research the history of beauty pageants and you won’t find Edith Mae Patterson listed as the very first Miss America. But according to a St. Louis newspaper and thousands of its admirers in the Arkansas of the 1920s and early 1930s, that’s what she was.

At first, in October 1921, the 19-year-old teacher from Pine Bluff was only a finalist in a photo contest. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat was determined to find the most beautiful woman in America. (Nine newspapers did something like this in 1921, according to a story published on the Miss America contest site.) The Globe Democrat was one of the two major dailies then serving St. Louis and had subscribers everywhere, including Arkansas.

Patterson’s aunt, Mrs. WJ Miller, submitted Patterson’s photo to the Globe-Democrat without telling her. Miller also sent the vital statistics of the young woman:

Height: 5 feet, 7 inches; weight, 127 pounds; bust, 36 inches; waist, 26 inches; hips, 37 inches. Wears size 51/2 triple A shoes; gloves, size 6; eyes, dark blue; hair, dark brown with a blackish cast; complexion, clear, good, natural coloring; Greek type: sculptural proportions.

Her aunt knew about these measurements by sewing her niece’s clothes.

On October 6, 1921, based on this photograph, three artists / judges declared Patterson the “American District” laureate – the most photogenic woman of 46 states. Missouri and Illinois were not included in this US district. Each of them and the city of St. Louis was a separate neighborhood, and each had their own most photogenic finalist.

The newspaper then summoned the finalists to Saint-Louis, to meet the judges.

His prizes included $ 1,000 and a week in St. Louis (and $ 1,000 was then roughly the purchasing power of $ 15,300 today). In addition to being on trial, she met a theater director named William Goldman and BJ Derby of Paramount Pictures Corp. The Arkansas Gazette reported:

“Miss Patterson’s public activities will be filmed from the time she reaches St. Louis until she leaves. This film will be shown in the local theater and later in Paramount Weekly.”

In other words, she was going to star in a newsreel.

The news barely struck fans when SW Benton, president of the Pine Bluff Advertising Club, hosted a public reception at the Pines Hotel. The hostesses included other Patterson members of the Pollyanna Club, a social club of women who believed in having good attitudes and being kind.

She was only a first grade teacher, but the administrators at Lakeside School exempted her from her fourth grade classes at Pine Bluff so that she could travel to St. Louis. The Pines Hotel organized a bon voyage dinner for 50 of their loved ones. Three hundred friends and a group accompanied her to Union Station in Little Rock.

Four decades later, looking back on her (surprisingly) career, she told the Gazette that beauty pageants were just beauty pageants in 1921.

She said the judges interviewed the district winners individually.

She wore ordinary clothes and swimsuits were not involved. It may have helped Patterson that she graduated from Pine Bluff High School in 1918 and spent a year in college at the Rice Institute in Houston. Corn:

“They just made us get on a chair, turn around, walk and talk.”

It was well received in the big city. Goldman hosted receptions in her honor at her 4000-seat theater, and Globe Democrat reporter Fred H. Brennan produced a lengthy essay analyzing her beauty from an “artistic” point of view.

“Before putting Miss Patterson on a figurative pedestal,” he wrote, “it’s fair to say that the photos posted so far in the contest have not done her justice. By a strange perversity. of lights and shadows, the camera added at least 20 pounds to its weight. His face, which appeared in an overly round oval, is actually very refined and almost aesthetic in its lineaments. This fact was immediately noted by the judges when they called her before them for conclusive test. The arrangement of her hair was also unfortunate as the lightness of the contours was lost in the reproduction. The profile cut [photo] was particularly bad. “

She “leaves a distinct impression of her composure,” he added. “She is Junoesque. Her coach, without being too athletic and muscular, portends dignity.”

In addition, she did not slump or walk around unnecessarily. And he liked his personality, which was friendly. She was “a girl you would like to know,” he said.

The clothiers who looked after the wardrobe that accompanied her prize declared her “a perfect size 18”. None of her dresses or dresses had to be altered.

Parties big and small have greeted his return to Pine Bluff.

On November 4, she was one of the attractions announced for a parade of cars in Judsonia and the opening of a hydroelectric dam. As the Democrat reported, it named the Arkansas Hydro-Electric Development Company Dam No.1 after speeches from dignitaries. She hit the dam with a hot spring water bottle “as she was suspended several hundred feet above the river in the tram on the cable car between the cliffs on either side of the creek”.

The Globe Democrat said Patterson was his biggest winner on November 6: the most beautiful woman in America. She didn’t know it until she picked up a copy of the St. Louis newspaper from the Marion Hotel in Little Rock, where she was making another appearance.

Cinema cameras captured the scene on November 7 when Pine Bluff celebrated the glory it had brought to all of Arkansas. One band played “Oh, You Beautiful Doll”, and 2,000 Cotton Belt employees turned up to cheer (his father, Arch Patterson, was foreman of the railroad shop’s mechanical department).

The Nov. 13 Democrat reported that a delegation from the Monticello Chamber of Commerce had shown up at Lakeside School in Pine Bluff, hoping they would oversee the installation of an oil well. She would pull the lever, sending the rotary drill into the dirt. The report said:

“Anyone interested in the project thinks that a girl from Arkansas, and the country’s award-winning beauty, will bring luck to an Arkansas oil well, and there was a choice block of 40 acres. reserved for Miss Patterson who will be given to her as part of the ceremony planned for the sinking of the shaft. “

At first, she begged because she already had too many appearances booked that week, but then changed her mind and accepted the invitation to visit Monticello and pull that lever.

Like a modern Miss America, she wore evening dresses, fur coats, and jewelry and was sent on a lightning tour of the North and East points to advertise the products.

And the appearances – in person, on the radio, in the news – were just beginning. Even among those documented in the Arkansas newspapers, there were far too many for me to keep typing about them today (and not just because I just got my booster dose of covid vaccine and my arm hurts). So let’s draw a line here and get back to this story on another day.

What did you say, reader friend? Are you wondering why the name Edith Mae Patterson is not familiar? And where did it get into the Arkansas Encyclopedia?

Would it ring any bells if I told you that she got married and her last name changed to Pennington?

In fact, we’re talking about Reverend Edith Mae Pennington, the national beauty queen who ditched her furs and makeup to become a traveling evangelist of Jesus.

Stay tuned for more.

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