In Beauty, and Beer
Dani Marco, meet Celeste Yarnall.
Ms. Marco is Miss Rheingold 2004, the first popularly elected Miss Rheingold since Ms. Yarnall, above, was elected Miss Rheingold 1964. The titles sum up a history of masterly marketing that morphed into a one-time fixture in American popular culture - the annual Miss Rheingold beauty contest - and its revival after it was discontinued
40 years ago.Rheingold beer was brewed in Brooklyn starting in 1883 and became a major regional brand.
But its popularity eventually waned, and its production ended in 1976,
12 years after the company did away with the Miss Rheingold elections following their two-decade run.In the late 1990's, several investors bought the Rheingold name and began making the brew again in Utica, N.Y. Last month, they returned part of the production to Brooklyn. They have also revived Miss Rheingold.
Ms. Marco, an actress and a bartender from the borough, defeated five other finalists, getting more than 50,000 of the votes cast in bars, restaurants and stores where the brew is sold, said the president of Rheingold Brewing, Thomas L. Bendheim. Ms. Yarnall was 19 and a model and budding actress from Los Angeles when she was elected Miss Rheingold 1964.
In that era, millions of votes were cast in each election as Rheingold was sold far more widely than it is now, and the elections had been familiar since the voting for Miss Rheingold 1942. (The first two Miss Rheingolds, for 1940 and '41, were picked without a public vote.)
"It was a huge deal," Ms. Yarnall said recently. She recalled that judges chose 10 candidates from among hundreds in Los Angeles, with similar winnowings in New York and Boston, and that six finalists emerged for the public ballot.
The thrill of victory was followed by an "exciting year" in New York, she said. "I did television commercials, print ads, took part in parades, had a pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair."
There were also $50,000 prize, a designer wardrobe and a "beautiful junior penthouse apartment on East 86th Street" in Manhattan.
After her successor was named for 1965 without a popular vote, new owners of the brewery then discontinued Miss Rheingold altogether, and Ms. Yarnall returned to Los Angeles and pursued an acting career, landing roles in movies and on television programs like "Star Trek."
But "acting was episodic," she said, and she eventually went into real estate, and then into her current career as a pet nutritionist. Of her Miss Rheingold time, "I remember it like it was yesterday," she said.
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