The Miss Rheingold Contest, a Brooklyn Story
Where Memoir, Genius Marketing, and Perceptions of Beauty and Race Merge
My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer.
Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.
It’s not bitter, not sweet; it’s the dry flavored treat.
Won’t you try extra dry Rheingold beer?
It is said that more people voted for Miss Rheingold than any elections other than the presidential ones.
If memory serves, the Miss Rheingold Contest always came at the start of baseball season. My cousin Linda and I would go to the store with my Aunt Mildred and stare hopelessly at the beautiful pale and mostly blond girls whose pristine purity was on display. No hope for us . . . or Italian girls, or blacks, or Puerto Ricans. Jinx Falconburg, a Spaniard and probably the most ethnic-looking of the Ms. Rheingolds, was the only one who held out some sort of hope (however false) to the borough’s browns and olives. Blacks and Asians were S.O.L.
The Rheingold contestants were always emblems of morality, modest and rigorously vetted. It could just be me, but I don’t remember ever seeing a Miss Rheingold pictured with a can or glass of beer.
The contest ran from 1941–1964, so anyone from our area who came of age during that period will remember this event, some with more pleasure than others. The contest was genius marketing…
