The Misses: Australia's Jennifer Hawkins hands over her crown to Canadian Natalie Glebova, left, last year. State finalists, centre, top to bottom, Alana Palister (Victoria), Kate Throley (NSW), Emma Newcombe (Victoria) and, right, Alana Pearson (NSW).
At a VIP cocktail party in Melbourne tonight, 20 state finalists for the Miss Universe Australia 2006 title will be whittled down to one. Janice Breen Burns looked beyond the tiara.
Jim Davie loses money, year after year, propping up Australia's leg of the Miss Universe pageant.
Since 1992 it's been a bit of a lark, a bit of fun, he says, being Miss Universe Australia's national director, meeting and working with some of the prettiest young women in the country. But in 2000 he gave it away. Some bits of the "voluntary" job were just too hard.
Getting sponsors was like pushing bricks uphill, and it sucked more time out of his business as a clothing manufacturer than he thought he could afford. He was due a break. But his timing, it turned out, was awful. "That was the year Elle Macpherson and (supermodel Naomi Campbell) were judges and there wasn't an entrant from either of their countries; not from Australia or the UK."Davie remembers the jolt it gave him. "This isn't a business for me, it's a community thing. We get Australia represented on that world stage every year so it was very, very disappointing not to have a high quality delegate as we usually have, that year."
It didn't take much for American entrepreneur Donald Trump's company — which bought the pageant in 1996 and with media giant NBC, broadcasts the hyperglamorous fi nal to almost a billion viewers in more than 80 countries every year — to lure Davie back to his calling. Soon, he was fl ying around the country again, searching for a nice Aussie girl to be a global goddess.
And she arose like Venus in 2004. Jennifer Hawkins. "She's the best thing about the pageant for many, many years," Davie says. "And I don't mean just here. She's popular everywhere; just an exceptionally nice person and a typical Aussie girl. Everyone loves her." He holds Jennifer Hawkins, crowned Miss Universe 2004 in Quito, Equador, responsible for the recent revival of interest in the pageant — an event that flipped and flopped through years of political correctness and plain apathy — around the world. "We've got a lot to thank her for." Last year, Hawkins surrendered her tiara in Bangkok to Miss Universe Canada, Natalie Glebova.
In 1952, a Californian textile company started the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants as both a snub to the Miss American title and a plug for its Catalina swimwear brand. When Jim Davie won the licence to manufacture Catalina in Sydney in 1992, he found he'd also fl uked the job and title of Miss Universe Australia's national director. Since then, he has mustered entrants by various methods, usually based on the availability of state directors and the whereabouts of willing sponsors.
TKPN
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