Miss Worldport LA Pageant Loses to Fall Art Exhibit

After nearly two decades, the Port of Los Angeles and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce have dropped their annual beauty pageant in favor of a fall art exhibit.

Miss Worldport LA--as the pageant was known in its most recent incarnation--proved to be an enormous amount of work for a contest that, according to chamber officials, was losing its local appeal and often crowned winners who had no connection to Wilmington.

“Last year it was someone who worked in Rolling Hills and lived in Redondo Beach, . . . “ said Lois Denzin, chamber executive director. “I think everyone just kind of lost interest in it, and it didn’t do enough local people enough good.”

Said Ralph Chadwick, the new chamber president: “We put in a tremendous amount of work for very little return.”

Miss Worldport LA’s duties have included representing the port at important ship arrivals, terminal dedications and other promotional events. The winner also competed in the Miss California USA contest. Past winners of the pageant include Marlise Ricardos of San Pedro, who won the Miss California contest this year as Miss Lomita.

Spotlight on Wilmington

Chamber officials and community leaders hope that the replacement event, a 3-weekend showing of 14 bronze sculptures by Wilmington native Jasper D’Ambrosi, will put the spotlight more directly on Wilmington and clear the way for an annual cultural event sponsored by the port and the chamber. The program will begin Oct. 21 with a $50-a-person, charity fund-raiser at the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum, which one of the organizers said will be “a very uplifting, black-tie affair.”

Denzin said the decision to cancel the pageant had nothing to do with the growing sentiment that beauty contests are demeaning to women. She noted that other pageants are “wildly successful.”

She said chamber officials want to highlight efforts to revitalize Wilmington. “We’re changing our focus,” she said.

The port, which in the past spent about $8,000 a year to help stage the beauty pageant and provide a $300 scholarship and gifts to the winner, has offered $15,000 to sponsor the art exhibit.

Cultural Event

“We want Wilmington to have some cultural event, an annual cultural event,” said Gertrude Schwab, who is chairing the chamber committee that is overseeing the exhibit and related activities, including an auction of a D’Ambrosi work and an art contest for harbor-area students.

The activities, to be collectively titled the “Worldport Los Angeles Art and Cultural Exhibit,” are scheduled for the the last two weekends of October and the first in November at the drum barracks museum.

The activities will precede the Veterans Day unveiling of a San Pedro memorial honoring the American Merchant Marine, designed by the late D’Ambrosi and finished by his sons.

Art Scholarship

Schwab said proceeds from the fund-raiser, and any other revenue generated from the art exhibit, will be divided among the chamber, which will use it to establish an art scholarship for local students; the museum, which is playing host to all the events; and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, in honor of D’Ambrosi’s granddaughter, who has the disease.

In addition, Schwab said, the committee hopes to create a calendar featuring the winning student artworks. The art will reflect the students’ views of commerce, navigation and fisheries.

Although Schwab said she hopes that the port will finance the cultural event for at least the next four years, Harbor Department spokeswoman Julia Nagano said the port will review the request each year.

The pageant’s cancellation came as a disappointment to the most recent Miss Worldport LA. Sherry Robertson, who won the title in April, 1987, said she wishes she had a successor to crown.

“They told me the day after I won that I would be the last queen they would have,” said Robertson, who was Miss Hawthorne in 1983 and was twice runner-up for Miss Worldport LA. “That’s not really the best feeling, to have somebody say to you the next day, ‘Well, congratulations, you’re our last one.’ ”

Robertson, who received a total of $1,700 in scholarship money from the port and other pageant sponsors, said she tried unsuccessfully to persuade chamber officials to continue the event. She gave up her title at a chamber mixer in March--”I didn’t give it up to anything or anybody,” she lamented.

Port spokeswoman Nagano said the absence of a beauty queen will not affect the Harbor Department, which is bowing to the chamber’s wishes in canceling the pageant.

“We have had some very lovely young ladies who represented us well,” she said. “But . . . the chamber is looking for different ways to reach the community.”