Barra Grant is Bess Meyerson’s daughter. Their relationship was far from ideal.
Bess Meyerson isn’t well known to everyone, but her semi celebrity status did cause her to be full of herself as well as being hard to please.
This is all according to Barra Grant who describes their relationship in her autobiographical solo show “Miss America’s Ugly Daughter”.
Bess Meyerson is the only Jewish woman to have won the Miss America contest and that was a lot to live up to. Grant never felt like she could compare to her mother.
The show opens with Grant receiving a call from her mother in the middle of the night. Her mother is in her 70s at this point.
It seems as though this is a nightly routine for the two. Meyerson (voiced by Anna Holbrook) berates her daughter constantly, but she also craves company and that seems to be the reasons for the calls.
Meyerson was crowned Miss America in 1945. It was a huge honor, but she still faced a lot of anti-Semitism. Pageant sponsors didn’t want to work with her, but she persevered and ended up having successful careers on TV and in politics.
Despite this, I have no idea who Bess Meyerson was before this, though many in the audience did. Grant mentions her mother’s accomplishments, but the main focus is the relationship between the two, so I still don’t know much about Meyerson besides that.
Grant is an actress and screenwriter and has accomplished things in her own right, but it was an uphill battle for her Asher mother constantly found ways to undermine her.
The conversations between Grant and her elderly mother are also difficult to listen to though for other reasons. It’s clear that Meyerson had no idea what to do once she was out of the public eye.
Grant truly includes the worst aspects of the relationship between her and her mother and maybe that’s truly how the relationship was with no exaggerations. Still, it does not paint Meyerson in a flattering light and makes her seem like an awful mother with little to no redeeming qualities.
It’s clear Grant is hurt by her mother, but despite all the details included in her show, there were things that were brought up and seemingly left unfinished.
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