JENNIFER HOSTEN

DID YOU KNOW

When Jennifer Hosten first arrived in the U.K. from Grenada for the 1970 Miss World contest, she had no idea there would be such a media frenzy around the competition and its participants. She quickly realized that she would have to do the best she could to stand out. “Women from small countries, and particularly women of color, like myself, really were not expected to be more than a number in the contest,” she told TIME, looking back 50 years later.

Jennifer Hosten was born October 31st, 1947 in St. Georges Grenada. She is a radio announcer, development worker, diplomat, flight attendant, model and author who studied in London before becoming Grenada’s beauty queen. She won the Miss World 1970 contest, representing sweet Grenada. Jennifer became the first woman from Grenada to win the title, well, the first Black woman or woman of color. The whole contest had been controversial even before the result had been announced. Afterwards allegations were made about the influence of the Premier of Grenada Eric Matthew Gairy, who was on the judging panel. She was 23 when she won the Miss World contest in November 1970.

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Can there be any occasion more emotionally volatile than a beauty contest? Even if you’ve never actually seen one (and who would dare confess to such dubious tastes?), you can easily imagine the goings on, the fixed smiles, the backstage bitching, the insincere congratulations and hysterical weeping. And that, of course, is just a normal contest. Much, much worse or more worse (you got the pic?) was a stormy contest that took place 50 years ago and which featured allegations of corruption, racism, demonstrations, and even a bomb. At its center was our very own, Daughter of the Soil, Jennifer Hosten.

On November 20, 1970, the 20th annual Miss World contest was due to take place at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The competition had become a mainstay of BBC light entertainment and was a lucrative franchise for the inappropriately named Mecca company, headed by Eric Morley and his redoubtable wife Julia. Fifty-eight women had qualified to take part in what the organizers hoped would be a problem free mix of glamour and comedy, hosted by the veteran American entertainer Bob Hope.

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But from the outset the omens were bad. Beauty pageants were anathema to an increasingly vociferous collection of radical feminist groups who targeted such events for demonstrations against what was then known as male chauvinism. The suave would be Conservative MP Eric Morley who seemed to personify such an attitude and his criteria for suitable contestants were unlikely to endear him to feminist protesters.

Girls were between the ages of 17 to 25, ideally five foot seven, eight or nine, waist 22 – 24 in, hips 35 – 36 in, no more no less, a lovely face, good teeth, plenty of hair, and perfectly shaped legs from front to back. Most just happy to be there.

Bizarrely, in the face of anti-apartheid protest, the Morleys had allowed two contestants that year from South Africa, one black and one white. Perhaps even more incongruously, they had invited the Premier of Grenada, Eric Gairy, to join the panel of judges. Gairy, a rabble-rousing populist with a penchant for having his opponents beaten up by his henchmen the infamous Mongoose gang, was at loggerheads with Britain over Grenada’s mooted independence. By sheer luck, no doubt, his appointment as a judge coincided with Grenada entering its first ever contestant.

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The contest began with a bang, literally, when in the early hours of November 20 an explosive device went off under a BBC external broadcast van parked outside the Albert Hall. Nobody was injured and the incident went largely unreported, but it seems that it was an early experiment in amateur terrorism by the so-called Angry Brigade.

Also angry were the 50 or so demonstrators who managed to get into the Albert Hall that evening (many others stood outside chanting and booing). They managed to disrupt proceedings by heckling Bob Hope and throwing flour and ink bombs onto the stage. Their placards carried slogans such as “We are liberationists. Ban this disgraceful cattle market”. Visibly shaken, Hope fluffed his lines and suffered a serious sense-of-humor failure, accusing the demonstrators of being “on some kind of dope”. His attempts to restore a semblance of normality to the increasingly anarchic proceedings failed. At several points he was forced to retire from the front of the stage as missiles rained down.

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Eventually security staff managed to eject some protesters, but not before one had thrown a heavy wooden football rattle at the judges. It narrowly missed Gairy and his colleagues, actress Joan Collins and country-and-western singer Glen Campbell.

The worst was yet to come. When, finally, the judges had deliberated, the winner and runners-up were announced by Bob Hope. The favorite (8-1), Miss UK, was no where to be found. Third was the bookies’ second favorite (9-1), Miss Sweden, who didn’t even come close. Second was the black South African contestant, and first was our very own Miss Grenada (100-1), who earlier had dressed as a “nutmeg princess”.

It was a sensation. A black contestant had never been crowned Miss World, and now the winner and runner-up were both black? Almost immediately the BBC’s switchboard was jammed by furious viewers complaining that the result was unfair and racially motivated. Thousands more rang newspapers and wrote indignant letters. Some members of the audience gathered outside the Albert Hall to chant “Swe-den, Swe-den”. While Jennifer Hosten celebrated her victory at a party, she was blissfully unaware that her triumph had become a cause célèbre.

What seems to have unleashed the controversy was the perception that the judges’ voting was rigged and the not entirely unreasonable belief that Premier Gairy might have had some influence on the outcome. But there was also a distinct subtext of racism. The British public was not, it seemed, ready for a non-white, an inhabitant from one of her colonies? a non-UK, Miss World??

The uproar refused to subside, and on November 24th, Julia Morley resigned as chief organizer. In what was looking increasingly like a disputed election investigation similarly to the USA Bush and Gore election results debacle, Eric Morley was able to produced and published the judges’ “majority vote” ballot cards. They revealed that although Miss Sweden had more first-choice votes than Miss Grenada she fell behind in the accumulated second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-place votes. The Morleys were finally vindicated. Even then, the conspiracy theorists refused to give up. It was Gairy who had bullied or charmed his fellow judges into their decision they cried. Gairy never openly confirmed or refuted the charges. He would impose his idiosyncratic form of leadership on Grenada until 1979 when our comrade in arms Maurice Bishop led a coup and overthrow his government.

So it was that the 1970 Miss World contest briefly put Grenada on the map and launched Jennifer Hosten’s career (she subsequently became a high-level diplomat and moved to Canada, having toured US military bases in December 1970 with Bob Hope). If she said that her ambitions were to travel, meet people and save the world, she has probably come closer than most beauty queens to fulfilling them.

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The contest also introduced millions of TV viewers to radical feminism and advocates of direct action and was probably instrumental, even in a small way, in advancing the cause of gender equality. Miss World would never be the same again, and for that generation of TV viewers, they should be forever grateful to have seen this played out in Black and White.