1954 Miss Universe - Martha Rocha

It was such a tragic year for Brazilians. On 5 August 1954, just 12 days after Miss Brazil 1954, Martha Rocha was chosen the runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant in Long Beach, California, there was an attempt at the life of right-wing journalist Carlos Lacerda in Rio de Janeiro in which his security agent was killed. 

The right wing media tried its best to pin the murder on President Getulio Vargas and hysteria took hold of the conservatives leading a campaign against the Vargas who saw no alternative but to kill himself with a shot through his heart. That happened 19 days after the murder on Rua Tonelero. 

On 25 November 1954, Juscelino Kubitschek is chosen candidate for president of the left-of-the-centre coalition - the same coalition that governed Brazil since 1946, which swang a little to the right a a little to the left.

Martha Rocha, Miss Brazil 1954 

Miss Universe 1954 was held on 24 July 1954, at Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in California. Miss USA, 21-year-old Miriam Stevenson from South Carolina won the competition.

There was a controversy among the newspaper people due to Miss Brazil having been the favourite to win up to the last minute. See text about the whole 'imbroglio' further down. The most beautiful woman in the Universe, Martha Rocha from Bahia, Brazil was actually placed at # 2.

Miss New Zealand can't stand the California midday sun and passes out while watched by her peers. Martha Rocha also suffered a sun-stroke but was helped in time not to pass out on the floor.

Miriam Stevenson is crowned Miss Universe by Christiane Martel. 

#3 Miss Hong Kong (Virginia Lee Wai-Chun); #2 Miss Brazil (Martha Rocha); Miss Universe from South Carolina (Miriam Stevenson); #4 Miss Germany (Regina Ernst) & #5 Miss Sweden (Ragnhild Olausson).

Martha Rocha, the most beautiful woman in the Universe (left) and official Miss Universe (right).

Mere inches at hips cost Brazil entry title of Miss Universe 

Sunday Morning, 25 July 1954

Long Beach, Calif. July, 24;  Girls let this be a lesson - two extra inches on the hips cost Miss Brazil the Miss Universe title.

One of the judges, who naturally didn't want to be quoted, disclosed today that Miss USA, a perfectly formed Southern girl, won because of the Latin's bulge.

In judging beauty contests, the experts look for the ideal form which is the hips and bust the same, with the waist 10 to 12 inches less. 

Maria Martha Rocha of Bahia, Brazil, measured 36 inches at the bust, 23 at the waist and 38 at the hips.

Miriam Stevenson, the 21-year-old South Carolina entrant who won both Miss USA and Miss Universe titles, measured 36 at the bust and hips and 24 at the waist. 

Even with the hip measurements Miss Brazil came awfully, awfully close. The judges had an unprecedented triple the vote before finally giving the nod to the Southern lass last night.

'Miss Brazil's face was the most gorgeous in the contest.', said the unnamed judge. 'But we just couldn't discount those hips.' 

Actually to newsmen covering the event Miss Rocha's hips were an asset. Of the 200 press people covering the contest, Miss Brazil was the overwhelming favourite to win. 

Although the beautiful blue-eyed Latin won't go home with the title, she will gather up some of the material rewards. 

By winning both of the titles Miss Stevenson was entitled to 2 movie contracts of 13 weeks each and two $4,000 convertibles. But the contest officials decided that Miss Brazil should have one of the cars. So, in a display of international amity, Miss Stevenson kissed Miss Rocha and presented her with the keys of one of the cars in a ceremony today. 

Final big event on the 10-day program was the coronation ball tonight at which the beauties escorts were handsome Naval air cadets from Pensacola, Fla. This was an eagerly awaited event because the girls' only contact with men this week has been with Rotarians, Kiwanians, Shriners, policemen and firemen - most of them old enough to be the girls fathers. 

Miriam Stevenson, a blond co-ed from Lander College at Greenwood, won the title of Miss Universe Friday night at Long Beach, California.

Miriam Stevenson & Martha Rocha.

Semi-finalists at Long Beach 1954:

 Argentina - Ivana Olga Kislinger
 Chile - Gloria Legisos Mesina
 Costa Rica - Marian Esquivel McKeown
 France - Jacqueline Beer
 Greece - Rika Diallina
 Italy - Maria Teresa Paliani
 Norway - Mona Stornes
 Panama - Liliana Torre
 Peru - Isabella León Velarde Dancuart
 Philippines - Blesilda Mueler Ocampo
 Uruguay - Ana Moreno

'Correio da Manhã' 1st July 1954 - New Face: Martha Rocha. 

Martha Rocha had 6 sisters and 4 brothers. Teresa entered a beauty contest before she got married. Martha's got two other sisters living in the U.S.A.; they're both married; Ruth lives in Michigan and Lucia lives in Massachusetts. Martha studied at Colegio Sofia Costa Pinto in Salvador-BA. Martha likes the movies and is a fan of Stewart Granger, Gregory Peck, Lana Turner and Eleanor Parker. She has never seen a Marilyn Monroe flick yet; 'they haven't shown them in Bahia yet', she says. 

Martha at Varig's first Constellation flight to New York.

Martha Rocha during the 1954 Miss Universe pageant in Long Beach, Calif. She came in second, but to Brazilians her finish was a moral victory.

Martha Rocha, 87, dies; to Brazil, a beauty queen denied a crown

Popular opinion has held that she came in second in the 1954 Miss Universe pageant because she didn’t conform to a North American standard of beauty.

By Michael Astor

10 July 2020.

Martha Rocha, whose second-place finish representing Brazil in the 1954 Miss Universe pageant made her a hero in her home country, in part because of a widely held belief there that she had unfairly lost the crown by a matter of inches — bodily inches — died on 4th July 2020, in Niterói, Brazil, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. She was 87.

Her son Álvaro Piano confirmed her death, in a nursing home, saying the cause was a heart attack following a long bout with emphysema.

Popular opinion in Brazil has long maintained that Ms. Rocha was runner-up because her figure — she was two inches wider around the hips and thighs than the winner, Miss USA — did not conform to a U.S. standard of beauty that prized a less curvy look. The pageant was held in Long Beach, Calif.

Those two inches — whether they were the real reason she lost (Ms. Rocha herself did not believe it) or just an urban legend — became a rallying cry and source of pride in Brazil, where beauty standards for women favored a so-called guitar shape, and where the North American fixation on thinness was frowned upon.

Though Ms. Rocha came in second, her country nevertheless treated her showing as a moral victory. As she arrived home from the United States, tens of thousands thronged the streets of her home city, Salvador, to catch a glimpse of her riding from the airport in a convertible, accompanied by the kind of motorcycle escort reserved for top dignitaries.

“I am immensely happy with the title,” Ms. Rocha told the newspaper Estado de São Paulo at the time. “It wasn’t me who won it but the beauty of the Brazilian woman, which I tried to represent.”

(Today, the Miss Universe organization says on its website that it is a “global, inclusive organization that celebrates women of all cultures and backgrounds.”)

Ms. Rocha was widely considered to be the first Miss Brazil, but that distinction technically belonged to Yolanda Pereira, who won the title in 1930. The national competition was discontinued after only a few years because of a lack of public interest, but it was revived in 1954.

After Ms. Rocha’s death, the author and cultural commentator Arthur Xexéo told GloboNews in Brazil that the continued publicity about her appearance in the Miss Universe pageant had even helped the country get over the suicide of President Getúlio Vargas a month later. (He shot himself in the chest when it seemed inevitable that Brazil’s army was going to remove him from office in the wake of a scandal. His death touched off riots.)

For beleaguered Brazilians, Mr. Xexéo said, suddenly “there was a beautiful woman representing Brazil before the whole world, and that was really something.”

Maria Martha Hacker Rocha was born in Salvador da Bahia, a coastal city about 800 miles northeast of Rio, on 19 September 1932, to Álvaro Pereira Rocha, an engineer and mathematics professor, and Hansa (Hacker) Rocha, a homemaker of German descent who raised the couple’s 11 children.

Martha Rocha was in college when a friend persuaded her to enter a local beauty pageant, and it put her on her trajectory to stardom. She was 21 when she won the title of Miss Brazil, though she had said that she was 18.

After competing in the Miss Universe pageant (which was won by the reigning Miss USA, Miriam Stevenson, a South Carolina college student), Ms. Rocha was flooded with offers for acting roles and advertising work, but her interest was in starting a family, her son said.

In 1956, Ms. Rocha married Álvaro Piano, a banker, in the resort city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. The couple remained in Argentina, living in Buenos Aires, where her husband’s family had settled after fleeing Portugal during World War II. There she gave birth to her sons, Álvaro and Carlos Alberto, before her husband died in a plane crash in 1959.

She returned to Brazil in 1960 and the next year married Ronaldo Xavier de Lima, a businessman. They had a daughter, Claudia, before separating in 1974.

Ms. Rocha was left destitute when, in 1995, she lost all her savings in the collapse of a currency exchange house run by a brother-in-law from her first marriage. She took up painting and for a time sold her canvases and worked to promote the Miss Brazil contest. But her income wasn’t enough to live on, and she eventually had to move in with her younger son.

As her health failed she spent her last years bedridden before entering the nursing home in 2018.

She is survived by her three children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Mr. Piano said his mother’s runner-up status in the Miss Universe pageant had probably served her better than a first-place finish would have, because it had made her the subject of a discussion that continues in Brazil to this day.

As for Ms. Rocha, she never really believed the story about the extra inches, though she acknowledged that it had burnished her legend.

“It wasn’t by two inches, no,” she once said in a TV interview, “but let’s leave it as if it was.”

Manchete, 11 February 1956.

Brazilian team at Football World Cup 1954 from 16 June to 4th of July.

Manchete - 24 August 1954 - President Getulio Vargas shoots himself in the chest.

Manchete 9 October 1954 - singer Doris Monteiro gets married.

1954 Governor elections. The first elections after Getulio Vargas committed suicide. Dark horse Janio Quadros is surprisingly elected São Paulo governor running against Adhemar de Barros who was a  populist powerhouse. Janio's cadaverous face belied a cunning politician that would soon go to the very top and become the President of Brazil in another 6 years.