Whatever Happened to...
Lee Meriwether, Miss America 1955

Lee Meriwether almost didn’t make it to finals in Atlantic City in 1954. Good thing for her — as well as for Miss America — that she did. After winning the title, she transcended expectations to become a queen of stage and screen, and she’s still going strong more than 50 years later.

By Fred Abel

GROUNDBREAKER: Lee Meriwether followed her 1955 title with a distinguished acting career, including notable appearances in the role of Betty on Barnaby Jones, as the star with the cast of The New Munsters, and as the title character in the film Catwoman.

One could forgive visitors at the Orange County Senior Expo, an annual spring event in Orlando, Florida, for creating a hornets’ nest of activity around the celebrity’s table. After all, they had one of America’s treasured Miss Americas and TV stars in their sights, and no Senior Expo booths hawking arthritis remedies, retirement retreats, or orthopedic shoes could distract them from earning face time with a legend.

This, after all, was a rare chance to meet and chat with the woman whom they’d admired as both a TV leading lady and trailblazer of the pageant industry — indeed, the first Miss America to appear on a live TV broadcast — Lee Meriwether. Seniors in particular remembered her fondly in the costarring role of Betty Jones opposite Buddy Ebsen in the late 1970s TV gumshoe series Barnaby Jones and in her mid-1990s guest-starring appearances on Murder, She Wrote. Today, they have become accustomed to seeing her in the recurring role of matriarch Ruth Martin on the TV soap All My Children.

But on this visit in May, Lee Meriwether had no other role to play but herself. “Each year is completely different,” she says in describing the arch of her career. “I’m either doing TV in New York with All My Children, or theater in Los Angeles or across the country in different productions, or I’m doing various appearances. This is the first time I’ve done a seniors expo.”

Gracious Good Cheer

Drawing from a folder filled with head-shot photos, the actress composed and passed out autographs by the hundreds over a two-day appearance schedule. On her first day, as the hour grew late and the expo crowd dwindled, it was my turn to meet a leading lady of the pageant industry. Though she’d just finished a long afternoon as the autograph queen, she kindly agreed to sit down for an extended chat that would touch on her amazing path from pageant queen to performer on stage and screen. In the process, she would confirm her reputation for taking on challenges with effortless grace and good cheer.

For many expo guests as well as her Hollywood cohort, Lee’s first starring role as Miss America, at age 19 in September 1954, has been eclipsed by all of her later successes. “It’s changed over the years,” she says about her public-recognition factor. “Some people have forgotten completely that I was Miss America. Some people are very much surprised in the industry. I did a movie and I was on the set for almost a week before someone happened to mention something about the Miss America Pageant — and these were people who were in the movie as well as the director — and someone said to me, ‘You were Miss America?’ and I said, yes. It’s not that I don’t publicize it, but some people are not aware.”

As it turns out, though, Lee Meriwether has been perfect for her history-making role at Miss America and beyond. Yes, as she herself is quick to point out, she was fortunate to have shown up in the right place at the right time for her auspicious and historic Miss America video debut. As a stunning 5-ft.-7-in., auburn-haired, blue-green-eyed 19-year-old beauty from San Francisco in her September 1954 appearance on that Atlantic City stage, Lee proved worthy of a national pageant title in winning the Miss America 1955 crown.

“I consider myself extremely lucky,” she says, “because I was not as prepared as the gals are today in any aspect in life or in show business.” She almost let her life-changing appearance pass her by. Nominated by a San Francisco fraternity for a local Miss America preliminary, she was unsure whether she wanted to move on once she took the Miss California crown. “I almost didn’t go to Atlantic City, because my father passed away,” she says. “It was my mother and Lenore Slaughter [at the time the Miss America director] reminding me that I’d have to give back the scholarship that convinced me to go.”