Yolande Fox

Betbeze was born on November 28, 1928 in Mobile, Alabama, to William, a butcher, and Ethel Betbeze.[1][2] Betbeze was raised in a Catholic family of French Basque descent, and she attended convent schools.[3]

She captured her first crown in 1949 when she won Mobile's "Miss Torch" pageant.[3] In 1950, Fox (then Betbeze) entered Miss Alabama for the scholarship opportunities the pageant presented.[4] As Miss Alabama, she traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to compete in the Miss America 1951 pageant. Having been educated in a convent school, she was reluctant to pose in a swimsuit and refused to do so after she won Miss America.[5] That led the swimsuit company, Catalina, to withdraw their sponsorship of the Miss America pageant and eventually brought about the creation of the rival Miss USA pageant.[2]

Aboard the USS Monterey in 1951

Fox's Miss America title, although won in 1950, was for 1951 and is the first Miss America title to be "postdated" in this manner. Due to the change, there was no Miss America 1950. The Miss America Organization has claimed that Fox's (then Betbeze's) actions were pivotal in directing pageant progress towards recognizing intellect, values, and leadership abilities, rather than focusing on beauty alone. From then on the Miss America pageant concentrated more on scholarship than beauty.[2]

Fox was active in the feminist movement. After her one-year reign as Miss America; was active in the NAACP, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and SANE (The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy); and studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Fox was an opera singer and did gain a reputation in that area. She continued to sing, appearing with the Mobile Opera Guild (now the Mobile Opera), and helped found an off-Broadway theater.[3]

Fox's home in Washington, D.C.

She married movie magnate, Matthew Fox, the former president of Universal Pictures, in 1954.[6] They had one daughter, Yolande "Dolly" Fox Campbell.[5] Her husband died after 10 years of marriage.

After her husband's death, she moved to Georgetown, Washington, D.C., purchasing the Newton D. Baker House from Michael Whitney Straight and his then wife Nina Gore Auchincloss. The home had previously been the residence of Jacqueline Kennedy after the assassination or John F. Kennedy in 1963.[7]

Fox had a relationship with Cherif Guellal, with whom she raised her grandchild, Yolande Paris Campbell, until Guellal's death in 2009.[8]

In the early 1990s Yolande Fox was contacted by the writer Philip Roth, who was researching the Miss America beauty pageant for his novel American Pastoral. Roth studied Fox's scrapbooks and interviewed her about the culture surrounding the pageant in the late 1940s; he later said, "She was very smart, very funny....She just opened up whole ideas for me that I couldn't have had on my own."[9]

Fox died on February 22, 2016 in Washington, D.C. of lung cancer.[1] She was survived by her daughter and granddaughter.

• Yolande Betbeze's bio on the Miss America site
• Miss Alabama official website