Miss New Jersey

The Miss New Jersey competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of New Jersey in the Miss America pageant.

Two Miss New Jersey winners have gone on to hold the title of Miss America: Bette Cooper who won in 1937 and Suzette Charles who did not win, but took over the title for the last 7 weeks of Vanessa Williams reign in (1984). They also have one unofficial Miss America: Dorothy Hann (1932).

This started in 2006.

This started in 2006.

In Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "American Pastoral", the central character Seymour "Swede" Levov marries Dawn Dwyer, an Irish Catholic winner of Miss New Jersey 1949, from nearby Elizabeth, whom he met at Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey.

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