Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Would you be so kind as to find out who represented Hawaii as a "country" in the 1952 Miss Universe Pageant? What is this person doing now? ‘It was just a contest’
for ’52 Universe entrantElza Kananionapua Edsman was Miss Hawaiian Islands when she came in second to Finland's Armi Kuusela in the first Miss Universe Pageant, 46 years ago in Long Beach, Calif.
She was 20, a Kaimuki High graduate and an Aloha Airlines hostess when she was chosen to represent the Territory of Hawaii, separate from the United States.
"Where I come from, we're all hoping and praying for statehood," she told pageant judges. "We hope soon to become the 49th state." (Hawaii finally became the 50th state seven years later.)
Shortly after the pageant, Elza -- her name was frequently misspelled as Elsa -- got a contract with Universal Studios as part of her prize, "launching her as a movie starlet."
"But I was so homesick," she told Kokua Line this week from her Kailua home. "That wasn't the life for me, and I came home."
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Elza Hiram at home: She was
'too homesick' to stay in Hollywood.
She married Alex Bell of Honolulu in 1953 and had three daughters. They divorced decades ago. Two years ago, she married Roy Hiram, the former chief of police of Kauai.Although she modeled and performed as an acrobat, Hiram, now 65 and the grandmother of five, has led a low-key life since her year in the spotlight. She was a sales clerk at Liberty House at Windward Mall until she retired two years ago.
"It was my first trip to the mainland, and that was the main reason that I entered," she recalled of the Miss Universe pageant. "It was just so exciting."
But the pageant has changed dramatically over the years, she said. Back then, "it was just a contest." There was no money nor sponsors. She bought her own clothes, did her own hair and makeup. "They didn't teach you how to walk or anything. You were just your natural self."
Now, "It's so commercial."
Hiram looks back fondly on the pageant, but "it's in the past. It was part of my youth." For years, she didn't even tell her children about being runner-up to the first Miss Universe.
The only thing she regrets is throwing away her trophy, as she did all her other beauty pageant trophies. "I kept it for years, but then it got tarnished," she said. "I thought, 'What do I need this for?' My daughter was so disappointed."
But Hiram still has her scrapbooks and, although it's ready to fall apart, she still has the yellow swimsuit she wore in 1952.
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