Willie Colón performing opening night at the new Copacabana in Times Square, NYC, July 13, 2011. Photo by L. Frank Cabrera on wikimedia commons. Some rights reserved.

The Copacabana night club in New York plays an integral part in the story of Miss Mizzou. It’s where Milton Caniff picked the first Miss Mizzou model Bek Stiner in 1952, and another Miss Mizzou model Gayle Sheldon in 1958.

As I say in the book, I think that Caniff used the Copacabana to pick his Miss Mizzou models for particular reason. In the academy award winning film All About Eve, a young Marilyn Monroe is introduced in the film as a “graduate of the Copabana school of dramatic art.” The comment is a sly insult to the character since the Copabana night club featured women known for dancing and not their acting skills.

Reportedly the insult made it’s way into infamy as other comedians repeated the quip, so it’s likely that Caniff would have been aware of it. When he decided to loosely base Miss Mizzou on Marilyn Monroe, I bet the idea of picking out a model from the Copacabana came to him as a novel solution.

The Copacabana is still a popular nightclub in New York. To modern audiences, they’ve probably mostly heard of it due to the infamous 1978 Barry Manilow tune. If you’re looking for more background on the nightclub, check out the books The Copa: Jules Podell and the Hottest Club North of Havana and The Copacabana.

IMAGE: Marilyn Monroe as she’s drawn on the cover of the comic book biography put out by Bluewater Productions in 2013 as part of their TRIBUTE line of comics. Used with permission.

Marilyn Monroe was a pop culture phenomenon. In the realm of comics, Monroe inspired Miss Mizzou just as she was gaining popularity as a star in 1952. In addition to Miss Mizzou she is said to have inspired at least two other comic characters.

Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, claims that he created the reporter character Vicki Vale based off of meeting Marilyn Monroe back in 1948. You can listen to him recount the story in the documentary “Batman and Me.” It’s hard to believe this story given Kane’s exaggerations over the years, but Terrance Canote’s blog post has a pretty good cross examination of the claim.

Posthumously Marilyn Monroe also inspired the comic character Miss Buxley. She was created by Mizzou Alum Mort Walker in 1971 as a secretary for General Halftrack in the comic strip Beetle Bailey. I mention the character in my Miss Mizzou book, and Mort Walker mentions the character in the quote he gave in relation to my book.

Beyond these characters, Marilyn Monroe herself has appeared in many comics over the years. This Marilyn Monroe character page gives a pretty good rundown of her comic appearances stretching as far back as 1954. As that page states, she is most often used in comics in a cameo role or as an homage to her classic poses, and not as a featured character. The exception to this is of course biography comics featuring Monroe, such as the Bluewater Marilyn Monroe comic from 2013.

IMAGE: The cover and a few pages of the Marilyn Monroe comic put out by Bluewater Productions in 2013 as part of their TRIBUTE line of comics. Used with permission.

What did Monroe herself think of comics? Besides this photo of her glancing at James Thurber drawings inside Costello’s Bar in New York, I haven’t been able to find anything connecting her personally to comics within her lifetime.

This is a proposed Miss Mizzou highway sign printed in the Columbia Missourian on April 19, 1958. Used with permission of the Columbia Missourian.

As I talk about in the Miss Mizzou book, there were ideas being thrown around about having a Miss Mizzou sign on the newly built interstate 70 to get people into Columbia. Did a Miss Mizzou sign ever exist? Here’s the evidence I’ve gathered so far.

A story from the Columbia Missourian from August 5th, 1966 mentions that there might have been a sign:

“Miss Mizzou was greatly applauded in Columbia with sign announcing ‘Welcome to Columbia – Home of Miss Mizzou.'”

Inside the 1968 Miss Mizzou calendar, a similar tale is told, although the source material for this write up might have come from the 1966 article:

“Naturally, Miss Mizzou was much applauded here, particular when Caniff let her first name – Columbia – be known. New road signs announced ‘Welcome to Columbia – Home of Miss Mizzou.'”

I have two people who attest that there was a sign. One is a MU alumnus who graduated in 1959:

“There was a large sign, including, as I recall,  the graphic of Miss Mizzou on the sign. It was on Interstate 70 if you were approaching Columbia from the east coming from St. Louis. Don’t know if there was one on the Kansas City side. But as I recall, it was not up for long.”

Another local resident who grew up in Columbia also saw the sign:

“I think the sign was a vertical Caniff drawing of the lady herself, not a photo of Stiner, and it would have graced the shoulders of I-70, which would have been more than half-way complete across the state by 1959.”

The sign would have likely been something that wouldn’t have been officially endorsed by the city, but I’m at a loss as to who would have put it up. A rogue band of businesses? A lone Caniff fan who owned property near the highway? I’ve extensively searched reels of microfilm over and over looking for this sign. If anyone has any information about the sign, please let me know!

1954 Bek Stiner photo at the Air Force Base in Nellis, Nevada. Photo from the collection of J.B. Winter.

Some sad news to share: I recently got word that the original Miss Mizzou model, Bek Stiner, has passed away. She died March 28, 2015 in Watsonville, California. She was born Doris Stiner, and was known as Bek Stiner during her Miss Mizzou modeling days, but was eventually known as Bek Nelson Gordon. You can view a list of her film credits on IMDB.

“Miss Mizzou” paper doll by Arn Saba & Barbara Rausch.

In the Miss Mizzou book I mention that a paper doll was created in 1958 that was never put into production. Unfortunately this doll has been lost to time; no known copies exist. However, since I’ve completed my book, I came across a Miss Mizzou paper doll that was created a few decades later. First, a little history lesson.

Canadian cartoonist Arn Saba created the character Neil the Horse in the mid 1970s. The character appeared in various forms throughout the years, but in the 1980s, a “Neil the Horse” comic came out under the umbrella of Dave Sim’s Aardvark-Vanaheim company. Saba was quite a Caniff fan, and quite the comic historian as well. Cartoonist Barbara Rausch had a regular page in the back of “Neil the Horse” that had drawings various clothes that fit on top of a “paper doll” drawn by Saba. This was an homage to the various paper dolls of yesteryear that would appear in magazines and newspapers, as well as comic books in the early part of the 20th century.

The main doll that Saba used was a character from the Neil the Horse series named “Mam’selle Poupée.” The doll clothes that Rausch would draw had various themes in those early issues of the comic, and one of the main series of dolls was titled “Great Women of Comics.” Clothes appeared for characters like Daisy Mae, Little Orphan Annie, Katy Keene, Mama Katzenjammer, Phantom Lady, and even Caniff’s character The Dragon Lady from “Terry and the Pirates.”

Of particular interest is Barb Rausch’s paper doll clothes for Caniff’s Miss Mizzou that appear in “Neil the Horse” #6 (1984). The doll of Mam’selle Poupée that fits these clothes is printed in “Neil the Horse” #3 (1983). Put the doll and the clothes together and you get a “Miss Mizzou” paper doll:

In addition to being a Caniff fan, Saba also did an interview with Caniff that was originally printed in the “Comics Journal” No. 108 in 1986, and reprinted in “Milton Caniff: Conversations.”  Saba, now known as Katherine Collins, recently name dropped Caniff in an interview on the inkstuds podcast.

You can pick up some “Neil the Horse” back issues on ebay and make your own Miss Mizzou paper doll.