Bess Myerson (July 16, 1924 – December 14, 2014) was an American politician, model, and television actress who in 1945 became the first Jewish Miss America.

Myerson reached her adult height when she was 12, and she towered over other children, something that she said made her feel "awkward and gawky" during her preadolescence.

[8][9] Myerson began studying piano when she was 9 years old and was in the second class of New York's High School of Music and Art in 1937, graduating in 1941.

[1][3][11] To support herself and her family while in college, she gave piano lessons for fifty cents an hour, and worked as a music counselor at a girl's summer camp in Vermont.

[1] Myerson was entered without her knowledge into the Miss New York City competition by John C. Pape, a retired steel magnate and amateur photographer who had employed her as a model while she was in college.

Despite revelations of the Holocaust in the previous months, America was still widely perceived as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant society that manifested hostility toward people of Jewish ancestry.

[3] An aspiring pianist, she briefly gave recitals on the vaudeville circuit before realizing that audiences were more interested in seeing her in a bathing suit.

[1][18] While Myerson was on her year-long tour as Miss America, she encountered "No Jews" signs posted in places such as hotels and country clubs.

[19] Such experiences led her to conduct lectures on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League titled "You Can't Be Beautiful and Hate".

[11][20] Myerson became a vocal opponent of antisemitism and racism, and her speaking tour became the highlight of her Miss America reign.

[21] In 2015, Religion News Service observed that at the time when she won the pageant, emaciated concentration camp survivors had just shed their prison clothes.

"[22] A few years after hearing her speak at an ADL function, television producer Walt Framer hired Myerson for the 1950s game show The Big Payoff.

[9] Myerson stepped down from her other commitments in 1969 when appointed by Mayor John V. Lindsay to become the first Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.

[3][27] In the 1980 United States Senate election, Myerson vied for the Democratic nomination in New York against Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, Queens District Attorney John J. Santucci, and Lindsay.

[11] Before her federal trial began, Myerson was arrested in May 1988 for shoplifting at a department store in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Her death was not immediately announced publicly, but it was confirmed by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office three weeks after she died.