The Miss America Pageant added the talent portion to the contest in 1935. Most contestants sing or dance, but some display more unusual skills.
1957: Amanda Whitman (Miss Tennessee) did a gymnastic tumbling and trampoline routine to the theme from The Third Man.
1959: Elizabeth Holmes (Miss New York) did an impression of French singer and actor Maurice Chevalier. Miss New Jersey, Beverly Ann Domareki, did an impression of a beatnik.
1960: Ann Susan Barber (Miss New Jersey) did a comic routine about a hillbilly attending her first baseball game.
1961: LaVerda Garrison (Miss Idaho) gave a dramatic reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
1967: Jane Jayroe (Miss Oklahoma) conducted the orchestra in a rendition of the #2 hit “1-2-3” (and she won the pageant!).
1973: Ellen Meade (Miss Florida) did a ballet sequence from Swan Lake…on roller skates.
1977: Julie Houston (Miss Alabama) played the banjo. The song: the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies.
1981: Angelina Johnson (Miss Tennessee) did impressions of the lead characters from TV’s Laverne and Shirley …with ventriloquist dummies.
1982: Laura Matthys (Miss Oregon) twirled a rifle to the tune of a traditional folk march from Herzegovina.
1987: Aurelie McCarthy (Miss Massachusetts) played “Hava Nagila” on the marimba.
1989: Tammy Kettunen (Miss Arizona) performed a “freestyle roller-skating” routine to “Amazing Grace.”
1992: Shannon Boy (Miss Arkansas) played the theme from Star Wars on the flute.
2011: Lauren Cheape (Miss Hawaii) performed acrobatic jump roping to the Hawaii Five-O theme.
The Talented Miss America