Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Miss America pageant”

Vanessa Williams Receives ‘Unexpected’ Apology at Miss America Pageant

By goodblacknews on September 14, 2015
Vanessa Williams received a public apology from the Miss America organization. (CreditMark Makela/Reuters)

Betty Cantrell of Georgia was crowned Miss America on Sunday, but an apology to Vanessa Williams stole the show.  In 1983, Ms. Williams, now 52, became the first African-American to win the Miss America pageant. She was forced to resign 10 months later after nude photographs of her surfaced.

She went on to enjoy a decades-long career in TV, film and music. But it was a particular redemption to return to Sunday’s pageant in Atlantic City as a celebrity judge.

After Ms. Williams sang a song, Sam Haskell, executive chairman of the Miss America pageant, apologized for the way the organization treated her three decades ago.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXOLd3G_AHY&w=560&h=315]

“I want to apologize for anything that was said or done that made you feel any less the Miss America you are and the Miss America you always will be,” Mr. Haskell said in an onstage apology.

Ms. Williams called the apology “so unexpected but so beautiful.”

Ms. Williams, who was 21 at the time, resigned after nude photos of her appeared in “Penthouse” magazine.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwBmoNXrr0w&w=420&h=315]

In her departing speech in 1984, Ms. Williams said that she had never consented to those photos being published; the magazine’s publisher responded by saying that the photos were an “interesting bit of highly newsworthy information and photographs,” and that the publication was carried out as an obligation to the magazine’s readers.

Ms. Williams’s return to the pageant was a happy one, and more than a little triumphant. In the days leading up to it, she shared photos of her Miss America crown and pin with her followers on social media.

article by Katie Rogers via nytimes.com

Vanessa Williams to Return to Miss America Pageant as Judge

By goodblacknews on September 8, 2015

Vanessa Williams (photo via deadline.com)
Vanessa Williams (photo via deadline.com)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Three decades after she gave up the crown amid a nude photo scandal, Vanessa Williams is returning to the Miss America pageant.
The Miss America Organization, Dick Clark Productions and the ABC television network announced Tuesday they are bringing back the award-winning actress and singer to serve as head judge for the 2016 competition. It begins Tuesday and culminates in the crowning of the next Miss America on Sunday.
Williams, the first African-American Miss America, won the title in 1984 but resigned after Penthouse magazine published sexually explicit photographs of her taken several years earlier.
She went on to have a successful career in film, television, music and Broadway.
“It was two drastically different images — that was the issue. It was Miss America, who is really kind of untouched and not reality, and then there was this woman in the picture that was the polar opposite of purity, and I was a normal kid in the middle,” Williams said in an interview broadcast Tuesday on “Good Morning America.” ”That’s one of the problems I’ve had to deal with in my career, not only being a Miss America, but being a scandalous Miss America.”
Sam Haskell, executive chairman and CEO of the Miss America Organization, said his friendship with Williams predated the turmoil caused by the release of the photos.
“I have been friends with Vanessa for 32 years,” he told The Associated Press. “When the photos were published, there were people urging her to fight, but close supporters knew if she lost that fight that she would be completely removed from the history books.”
Haskell has been trying for a decade to bring Williams back to the Miss America stage, but this was the first year the logistics could be arranged.
“Vanessa’s career speaks for itself, with all the success that she has had,” Haskell said. “Her return as a huge success is a way for us all to move forward and put the past behind us. It’s truly an honor to welcome her back to the Miss America Pageant.”
Since her 1988 debut album, “The Right Stuff,” Williams has sold more than 7 million records worldwide and has scored No. 1 and Top 10 hits on various Billboard album and singles charts, including pop, dance, R&B, adult contemporary, holiday, Latin, Gospel and jazz.
Her work has been honored by 4 Emmy nominations; 17 Grammy nominations (of which 11 were for her individually); a Tony nomination, 3 Screen Actors Guild award nominations; 7 NAACP Image Awards; and a Golden Globe, Grammy and an Oscar for Best Original Song for her platinum single “Colors of the Wind,” from the Disney film “Pocahontas.”
She also starred on the TV shows “Ugly Betty” and “Desperate Housewives.”
Williams co-starred with Cicely Tyson and Cuba Gooding Jr. in Broadway’s “The Trip To Bountiful” in 2013. She returned to the Great White Way the next year in the musical “After Midnight.”
She joins pageant hosts Chris Harrison and Brooke Burke-Charvet, music curator Nick Jonas and celebrity judges Brett Eldredge, Taya Kyle, Danica McKellar, Kevin O’Leary, Amy Purdy and Zendaya.
article by Wayne Parry via bigstory.ap.org