Bert Parks, Easy With a Laugh, Gets the Last One

In the mid-1950s, Bert Parks was walking along in New York City with his feet barely touching the pavement.

Although never the darling of critics, the square-jawed Georgian with the gushing charm and the rabbit’s-foot luck had landed a string of hit TV and radio shows, a rage of the era.

He had just started as master of ceremonies of the Miss America Pageant, annual appearances that would soon turn into a national tradition.

The world was impressed--even the carful of striking longshoremen rounding a corner in front of him. One leaned out the window.

“Hey, Boit,” the man yelled. “Ya got da woild by da. . . . “

Bert Parks, leaning back in a lounge chair behind his house in Greenwich, Conn., brays with laughter recalling that moment.

In a turn of events demonstrating that life imitates art and art imitates Harpo Marx, Parks once again has the woild in a vulnerable position. His laughter is particularly apt. A laugh is always good but becomes exquisite when it is the last one. His face widens with what one critic described as “a smile you could read by.”

“It’s the most wonderful thing to smell the roses while you’re standing up,” he said.

Roses have been coming up in riotous abundance for the perennial host and genial presenter of the plastic icons of America. On a 1989 “Roseanne” episode, he played a celestial judge determining the sitcom star’s fate. In a recent cameo role in “The Freshman,” he sings to a giant lizard.

But his finest hour will come Saturday when he makes a guest appearance in the 70th Miss America Pageant, the contest from which he was summarily fired 11 years ago.

Officially, the pageant host spot still belongs to Gary Collins, the man who replaced Parks to add a more “contemporary image.” But, rest assured, it will be Parks, the bromide-oozing master of ceremonies hired in the pageant’s second televised year and the one most identified with its showcase of female stereotypes, who will steal the show.

Pageant Director Leonard Horn, who invited Parks for a hero’s return at his wife’s suggestion, actually did not believe that he would accept. Based on the gush of mail, articles and television interviews since the announcement, Horn believes that it will be a pretty sentimental scene.

“There shouldn’t be a dry eye in anybody’s face,” he said.

Once again, viewers will hear Parks croon “There She Is, Miss America”--a tune the pageant claims is one of the three most famous songs in American history, along with “The Star Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America.”

Once again, they will listen to his fawning banter with Miss America--this time, with 30 former Miss Americas, 15 of whom he crowned himself, who are being brought back for the anniversary. He predicts that it will be “a great nostalgic moment.”

That 75-year-old Bert Jacobson, the singing son of a haberdasher, should sail calmly through the jagged straits of life toward a happy port seems only appropriate. What should a professional charmer expect other than a charmed life? But, at times, even he seems stunned by the beauty of it all.

“It’s like somebody’s watching and turning the right key at the right time,” he said.

Parks, aware how benevolent fate can become fickle disaster, has already made sure his musical package will be tied in a pretty bow. Last week, he prerecorded the Miss America song for a possible lip-sync performance just in case he has a cold.

Still, he intends to deliver his trademark tune live if possible. His mobile eyebrows shoot upward in mock horror.

“My nightmare,” he said, “is I’ll get up there and forget the lyrics.”