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How did the Miss Mizzou skit shows get started? When the first Miss Mizzou contest was explained in an issue of the 1956 Alumnus Magazine, a calendar was mentioned but no skits. By the next year, the Savitar yearbook mentions that there were “Miss Mizzou Skits” in a couple of places, so they must have started that year. How elaborate were these early skits?

Take this photo from the 1957 Savitar yearbook, which shows what looks like a potential Miss Mizzou contender backed up by several other girls. The setting of this photo looks fairly informal with the men in the photo sitting on couches in some type of lounge environment. By 1957-1958, it looks like the skits had grown to include a stage show. A photo from the 1958 Savitar yearbook shows a photo of a women in a trench coat on a stage surrounded by several other girls.

The Miss Mizzou skits stayed as a stage show until the final show in the Fall of 1970. That year they actually did not produce a calendar; only the skit show. This means that in theory there should have been 15 calendars produced and 15 skit shows produced. Taken together, that’s 16 years total of the Miss Mizzou contest.