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Famous Pageant Titleholders

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Mary Hart

Famed for her insured legs and perennial perkiness, the anchor of Entertainment Tonight competed as Mary Johanna Harum, Miss South Dakota, in the 1970 Miss America Pageant. She made the top ten, but lost to Phyllis George.  

Hart later co-hosted PM Magazine and co-hosted with Regis Philbin before moving on to E.T. fame.

Cheryl Lynn Herring

Cheryl, who competed as Miss Virginia and 4th runner-up in the 1977 Miss USA Pageant. She later appeared in the ABC soap opera, General Hospital, as Lucy Quartermaine Coe.

Laura Herring

Laura, the first Latina to win the Miss USA title (1985), went on to marry a European count and star in the daytime television series, Sunset Beach, as Carla on General Hospital, and in the sexy film, The Forbidden Dance.

Kelly Hu

Kelly Hu, the former Miss Teen USA of Chinese-Hawaiian lineage, has achieved success in the entertainment field, starring in Martial Law opposite Sammo Hung.

• View Kelly Hu movies

Cloris Leachman studied drama at Northwestern University before competing in the 1946 Miss America Pageant as Miss Chicago where she was named a semifinalist.  Although Cloris failed to win that national title, she used her scholarship earnings to study drama with Elia Kazan.  Leachman became a respected actress who has been nominated for over 20 Emmy awards, won four Emmy awards, and earned trhe Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film, The Last Picture Show. 

Leachman's dozens of credits include the hit TV series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Texasville, Kiss Me Deadly, and Danielle Steel's Fine Things.

Marla Maples

Before becoming the second Mrs. Donald Trump, Marla was named Miss Photogenic and placed fourth in Georgia's Miss Teen Pageant. In 2007, she was hired to co-star in the television series, The Ex-Wives Club.

• View Marla Maples biography

Before reigning as First Lady of the Philippines by the side of Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Romualdez reigned as Miss Manilla 1953.

Ali MacGraw

MacGraw, a model and contestant in a "prettiest waitress" pageant in 1957, achieved overnight fame playing Ryan O'Neal's lover dying from leukemia in 1970's hit film, Love Story.  The role earned her an Academy Award nomination for best Actress and a Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Drama.

MacGraw's film career has including playing the leading lady to some of Hollywood's greatest actors.  MacGraw starred in Goodbye, Columbus (1969) for which she won a Golden Globe award for "New Female Star of the Year", The Getaway (1972) with Steve McQueen, Convoy (1978 with Earnest Borgnine, Players (1979), China Rose (1983) with George C. Scott, and The Winds of War (1983) with Robert Mitchum.

Equally well known for her romantic life, MacGraw married film producer Robert Evans in 1971.  After falling in love with co-star Steve McQueen during the filming of The Getaway, she divorced Evans and married McQueen.  They divorced in 1978.

Although her career lost momentum after the marriage, she later returned to the spotlight to appear in Glam (1997) and Natural Causes (1994) and to produce her best-selling yoga video, Ali MacGraw: Yoga Mind & Body.

Vera Miles

She won the 1948 Miss America swimsuit competition, but placed only third to a marimba-playing Minnesota farm girl (BeBe Shopp), who won the crown.

Still, Miles went on to enjoy a successful acting career, appearing on television's Marcus Welby and Kojak, and in numerous films including the Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) for which she became famous, and The Wrong Man (1957) with Henry Fonda.  Miles was a regular leading lady in John Wayne films including The Searchers (1956),The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Hellfighters (1968).

          

• View Vera Miles movies

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