In Texas, Two Kings of the Beauty Queen

By Lisa Belkin Feb. 28, 1988

Credit...The New York Times Archives

February 28, 1988, Section 3, Page 6

The life-sized cut-outs of Laura Martinez-Herring, Christy Fichtner and Michelle Royer in the offices of Guyrex Associates are symbols of a dynasty. Guyrex, owned by Richard Guy, 49 years old, and Rex Holt, 47, is in the business of coaching beauty contestants. For each of the past three years, Miss Texas - a ''Guyrex girl'' - has become Miss USA.

But the cardboard pictures - gifts from pageant sponsor Procter & Gamble, which displayed them in supermarkets nationwide - are symbols of something else as well. They are reminders of the link between business and the beauty pageant. It is not enough for these women to look pretty. They must also sell products.

''My beauty queen is a salesperson; that's her talent,'' Mr. Guy said.

The Miss USA pageant, to be broadcast nationwide from this city on Tuesday night, is a most unabashed example of this link between dimples and dollars. The pageant is a division of Miss Universe Inc., owned by the Madison Square Garden Corporation, which is, in turn, owned by Gulf & Western. It was founded, in 1951, by swimsuit maker Catalina, after the Miss America pageant refused to let the company use pictures of contestants in its advertising.

''You can't even talk about the two pageants in the same sentence,'' said Leonard Horn, president of the Miss America pageant. ''The Miss USA pageant is out to make money. All we want to do is have enough money to drive the program, put on the pageant and pay the scholarship.''

The Miss America pageant ''is one approach,'' said George B. Honchar, president of Miss Universe Inc. ''Ours is a newer approach.'' Indeed, Miss Universe Inc. reportedly nets more than $1 million just from the broadcast of the Miss USA pageant. ''We do not give scholarships. We give cash,'' Mr. Honchar said. ''We are a for-profit organization.''

Behind this for-profit operation are state-level franchises like Guyrex - small businesses whose job is to find the contestants vying to be Miss USA.

Guyrex will be trying to win the Miss USA title again this week, this time with Courtney Gibbs of Fort Worth. ''It's like any other business wants to say 'we're the No. 1 beer, we're the No. 1 car. Well we're the No. 1 beauty pageant organization,'' Mr. Guy said.

Competitors seem to agree. ''They're marvelous showmen; I do my best, but I can't do what they do,'' said Marilyn Seitz, director of the Miss New York and Miss New Jersey Pageants for Miss USA. At last year's national pageant, she said, the Guyrex mystique was so strong that she good-humoredly told Miss Texas, Michelle Royer: ''You don't even have to show up on pageant night. You can just throw your sash on the stage, and they can crown that.''

Why is Guyrex so successful? Some say it is the money Gurex spends on its ''girls.'' Some say it is the time, which is almost the same thing - the hefty state-level prize package allows the state winner to quit her job and prepare full-time for the national pageant.

Ms. Seitz suggests that Texas itself could be a factor. ''Pageants are bigger in the rural states. The way out for a young woman there is visibility, and the way to get visibility is a pageant,'' she said.

But the two men of Guyrex say it is their philosophy. ''The pageant is a job interview, and the judges are looking for the person who can do the best job. We train the girl so she's ready for the job,'' Mr. Guy said.

''We try to work with the girls, so they don't fall into what John Q. Public thinks of as a beauty queen,'' said Mr. Holt. ''We don't want a chirpy voice and a plastic smile.'' (On the other hand, in defending the use of the word ''girls'' to describe women in their 20's, Mr. Guy said that ''this is not a woman's thing; a woman couldn't put up with this.'') Mr. Guy and Mr. Holt, both former Arthur Murray dance instructors, formed Guyrex 24 years ago, when they were designing parade floats for El Paso's Thanksgiving Day Sun Bowl parade and designing Christmas decorations downtown banks.

In 1971, they took over the Miss Texas franchise of the Miss America contest, but were dismissed four years later over what Mr. Holt described as ''creative differences.''

Guyrex got the job of Texas director for the Miss USA pageant that same year, to replace the previous director - who created a scandal by collecting entry fees and failing to hold a pageant, according to Mr. Guy.

The company has since added five other pageants to its roster: the local Miss El Paso and Miss San Antonio contests, Miss Texas Teen-USA, and, most recently, Miss California-USA and Miss California-Teen USA.

The company also runs a workshop that designs formal wear for local socialites and non-Guyrex beauty contestants and an El Paso Mexican restaurant, purchased with pageant profits. When the books are totaled, Guyrex is easily able to pay its $10,000 monthly operating expenses.

The two men share a Spanish-style home and work in two buildings next door that are papered with photos of contestants wearing bathing suits, evening gowns and Spandex cowboy outfits. Mr. Holt's dog, a shaggy Maltese, and Mr. Guy's white turtle dove live on the premises.

''The beauty pageant business is not the way to get rich,'' said Mr. Holt. ''You have to expect to lose money for the first couple of years.''

STILL, Guyrex says it showed a profit of $12,000 just on the statewide Miss Texas-USA telecast last year, a profit of $14,000 on the Miss El Paso contest (untelevised, but the country's most lucrative local pageant) and a profit of $4,000 on the state-level Miss Teen Texas-USA contest.

These numbers are all the more striking when compared to those of the California contest, which is fairlytypical of a state franchise and similar to the situation of the Texas contest when Guyrex first took over.

The Miss California-USA pageant showed a net income of only $2,300 last year; Miss California Teen-USA lost $22,000, according to Guyrex. Advertisers pay $6,000 a minute for the televised California pageant. The Texas pageant can charge $21,000 a minute. ''This year Texas paid for a lot of California,'' said Mr. Guy. ''We're getting the California pageant in shape, but we have a long way to go. There's no respect for us in LaLa land. Texas doesn't have glamour, so there's a need for people like us who deal in glamour.''

In Texas, Guyrex has turned glamour into a science. Last year, for example, there were 120 contestants in the Miss Texas-USA pageant, televised in San Antonio. Participation was based on a formula designed by Guyrex: the larger the television audience of an area, the larger its contingent. Dallas-Fort Worth rated 30 contestants; Houston, 20; Abilene, 1.

Under a 10-year contract, San Antonio pays Guyrex a six-figure fee and provides use of the civic center. In return, Guyrex includes a four-minute segment in the broadcast, showing the contestants at major city attractions.

Other major sponsors are Subaru, which buys two minutes of airtime for $42,000 and provides the winner with a car; Pepsico, which also buys two minutes; Miller Lite Beer; MCI Communications and Lever Brothers. Half of the judges are from these corporations because, Mr. Guy said, ''it gets them directly involved with the work we're doing.'' The televised pageant received a 42 share from Nielsen, powerful ammunition when recruiting sponsors.

All told, the Miss Texas-USA pageant took in $317,000 last year and spent $305,000, says Carolyn Mitchell, Guyrex's business manager. Besides the money from the city of San Antonio, the income included $104,000 in entry fees ($700 per contestant) and program booklet ads, $144,000 from sponsors and $24,000 in ticket sales.

Television costs alone were $82,000, Guyrex said, but worth it, since companies give in-kind contributions to the winner in return for a mention at the end of the show, a practice that increases the Miss Texas-USA prize package at no cost to Guyrex.

Tony Lama provides the winner with six pairs of designer boots. Designer Beverly Standing provides evening wear. Zales chips in $45,000 worth of jewelry for the year of her Texas reign and American Airlines provides overseas travel.

MISS GIBBS, the 1988 winner of this package, is not using the pageant to become a professional, high-paid model, unlike many other contenders. She already was one when she entered the competition, and had been represented by the Kim Dawson and Eileen Ford agencies. Now, she hopes her time as Miss Texas-USA will lead to a career in broadcasting.

She meets all the requirements of the pageant. She is between 18 and 24 years old (she recently turned 21, old enough to legally drink the Miller beer she promotes). She has never been married and has never had a child.

Shortly after the state pageant, Miss Gibbs moved into the ''Miss Texas USA apartment'' on the top floor of a Guyrex-owned building, and began her transformation.

Much of the work is physical. Guyrex sends her to an exercise coach in San Francisco to learn a workout routine she can do when traveling. The company also provides an in-house tanning salon a nutritionist and consultants who experiment with her hair and clothes, taking six months to decide which colors flatter her the most. Some of the products and services used in this endeavor are free to Guyrex in exchange for promotions, but they pay for others. The nutritionist, for example, sent a $200 bill.

Some of Miss Gibbs's training is mental. Practice interviews are devised to make her comfortable with any question a journalist or a contest judge might ask. There are parties with local society types, ''to make her feel comfortable around classy people,'' Mr. Holt said. (A least one Guyrex beauty queen can vouch for that approach. Laura Martinez-Herring, Miss USA 1985, recently married a German count.) Then there are the public appearances, mostly on behalf of the Miss Texas-USA pageant sponsors, who pay lodging and transportation costs - though, usually, no fee. (If a non-sponsor wants to hire Miss Gibbs, Guyrex collects $500 a day.) Representing her sponsors, Miss Gibbs modeled Pam Mahoney furs at a Dallas trade show, staffed the Heuer watch booth at the New Orleans Jewelry Show, and attended the county fair in Beeville on behalf of Miller Lite. She also appeared at an auto show for Subaru.

Before she went to the auto show, she learned about the car. ''She could sell that Subaru,'' Mr. Guy said. ''The sponsors want someone who can sell their product, and the judges want someone who can sell the sponsor's product.''

''Everything I won, I sell,'' Miss Gibbs said. ''I can change the tires, I can explain the engine. The judges know that when they get a Miss Texas, that girl is ready to sell anything.''

On Tuesday night, Miss Gibbs will try to sell herself. For the state costume contest, she will wear a cowboy suit of aquamarine Spandex with tinsel hanging from the sleeves. In rehearsals for the evening gown competition she has been wearing white chiffon, but only to confuse her rivals. On competition night, she plans to wear black velvet. ''No one has ever won in black before,'' Mr. Holt said.

The national pageant works very much like the pageant Miss Gibbs has already won - except the Miss USA ledgers have more commas in the numbers. The televised event is sponsored - as it has been since 1958 - by Procter & Gamble.

When it's all over, the next Miss USA will receive a $15,000 cash award, the use of an apartment in Los Angeles that she will share with Miss Universe and an additional $31,000 in cash from a variety of sponsors.

She will also get, among other prizes, a 1988 Mazda RX-7 sports convertible, a complete wardrobe from J. C. Penney, a mink coat, gold jewelry, video equipment, exercise and tanning machines, shampoo, shoes and the use of a vacation share in the Caribbean.

Some gifts are given in exchange for announcements on the air. Others come with the understanding that Miss USA will promote them.

The winner also gets a $25,000 personal-appearance contract, and this may be the most profitable part of Miss Universe Inc.'s business. The corporation charges a fee for every appearance by Miss USA - and by Miss Universe and the nearly 100 winners of national pageants that compete in the Miss Universe pageant.

Officials of the Miss Universe pageant would not release figures specifying what the company makes on these appearances, but if the Miss America pageant is any guide, Miss USA alone may bring in $100,000 to Miss Universe Inc. from those appearances.

Miss America is allowed to keep all the money she earns from appearances. But the older pageant may be changing. Miss America's TV ratings have been dropping over the years. Last year it got a 20.4 rating, its lowest ever. In 1962 its rating was 48.

Numbers like those may be persuading the pageant to try the ''newer approach'' - the sales pitch. This fall, says Mr. Horn, Miss America's president, the contest will increase is promotion budget from the ''almost nothing'' it is now. And the reigning Miss America will spend the week before the pageant introducing the NBC fall lineup.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/28/business/in-texas-two-kings-of-the-beauty-queen-business.html