Jo-Carroll Dennison, oldest ex-Miss America and longtime Idyllwild-area resident, dies

Jo-Carroll Dennison, who was crowned Miss America in 1942, is seen in December 2004. She has died, according to the Miss America Organization. (File photo by DeeAnn Bradley/The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

By ALLYSON ESCOBAR | October 26, 2021 at 12:19 p.m.

The 1942 Miss America Jo-Carroll Dennison, a longtime resident of the Idyllwild and Pine Cove areas, has died.

The Miss America Organization confirmed her death in an Oct. 20 Facebook post, saying she was crowned in 1942. She was 97, according to news reports. Her death was Oct. 18, said Evan Mills, a close friend.

Jo-Carroll Dennison, who was crowned Miss America in 1942 and lived for years in the San Jacinto Mountains, has died, according to the Miss America Organization. (File photo by DeeAnn Bradley, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Dennison died at her longtime home in the Idyllwild – Pine Cove area in the unincorporated San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County, Mills said. She was the oldest living Miss America, he said.

In September, Dennison published a memoir, called “Finding My Little Red Hat.” The book tells stories from Dennison’s life, such as being born in a men’s prison in Arizona in 1923, performing with a traveling vaudeville troop and becoming a secretary — all before being crowned an American beauty queen at 18. She shares an “unvarnished view of a starlet’s life in Hollywood” in the 1940s, according to a news release about the book, and how her role as Miss America helped boost American troops’ morale during World War II.

Dennison helped lead a scholarship program through the Miss America Organization. She married comedian Phil Silvers, according to the Internet Movie Database, and continued her acting career with 20th Century Fox and later worked in live television production. In the 1980s and ’90s, she worked at Hemet Hospice as a community relations director for over a decade. In a 2011 interview, she described it as “truly the most purposeful, rewarding work I ever did.”

In a video posted in September for the Miss America Organization pageant’s 100th anniversary, Dennison expressed her wishes for pageant queens to work towards “healing divisions” in the country.

“In looking back over my life, I saw that my many marvelous adventures and experiences would not have happened to me,” Dennison said in the video. “It was being Miss America that made the crucial change in the path of my life … I lift my glass to the future Miss Americas. May they continue to be a force for good.”

https://www.pe.com/2021/10/26/jo-carroll-dennison-oldest-ex-miss-america-and-longtime-idyllwild-area-resident-dies/