Bess Myerson, the musically talented daughter of poor Russian immigrants, is crowned Miss America just days after the end of World War II, an improbable choice of a Jewish woman, given the sentiment of bigotry in 1945. Her beauty and poise certainly played a role, but it was her brilliance as a musician that captivated the audience and the judges. In this essay, Linda Kass reveals why music was important to Bess Myerson and the ways it opened doors for her. Kass’s new novel, Bessie, will be published on September 12.

Bessie Myerson is nine years old when she has her first piano lesson. Her mother, Bella, marches Bessie across the rooftop of their Bronx housing complex, Sholem Aleichem Cooperative, to the section where her music teacher lives, waits for her to be finished, then hurries her back across the rooftop to their single bedroom flat. Bessie, her parents, and her two sisters live among mostly Eastern European Jews like them, many being musicians and artists. Bessie often hears melodies seeping from inside neighboring apartments. But over the resounding piano chords and violin sonatas, Bessie also hears her mama’s shrill voice and constant command: “Practice! Practice! Practice!”

Bella Myerson’s drilling and nagging is inflicted on each daughter, as she insists that they perfect their skills by practicing for hours every day. She sacrifices to pay for music lessons for all three girls, determined that they become musicians—pointing out that music teachers earn their own living. To Bella, music is like food, a necessary and integral sustenance for their well-being.

Bessie’s mother is willing to spend the little money the family has saved for a battered secondhand baby grand piano. The instrument had to be hoisted up three flights and wheeled into their crowded living room. Her father, Louis, found old carpet samples from his various carpentry jobs and stitched them together with an enormous needle, transforming the fragments into a patchwork rug set under their piano, muffling the constant resonance so the downstairs neighbors wouldn’t complain.

The turning point in Bess Myerson’s music life began just two years after her first piano lessons and after the arrival of a piano in their home. Suddenly, young Bessie’s life begins to revolve around music. And the person responsible for making music matter to Bessie is Dorothea LaFollette, the nurturing piano teacher and role model who begins teaching Bessie when she is eleven. Mrs. LaFollette illuminates how musical expression can be Bessie’s friend and companion.

The LaFollette apartment overlooks Central Park on West 86th Street and Broadway, a 40-minute subway ride from Bessie’s Bronx home, a journey Bessie makes alone by the time she is thirteen. There, two Steinway baby grand pianos greet her and, thanks to Mrs. LaFollette’s steady guidance and inner calm, Bessie’s insecurity and self-consciousness is stripped away. At her first unforgettable lesson, Bessie’s graceful and composed teacher gives her Charles Louis Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist, sixty exercises that Bessie begins to repeat daily. They are designed to train her in speed, precision, and agility, as well as strengthen her fingers and increase flexibility in her wrists: movements that begin to build her skill and confidence.  Music becomes her escape.

Bessie loves learning about the increasingly challenging piano sonatas and concertos Mrs. LaFollette introduces to her. She becomes absorbed in the music at all levels: learning about the pieces and their composer, the history—that scholarly part of being a striving musician—but she soaks up the expressive aspects of the compositions that fill her hunger for affection, for acceptance, to feel happy, to belong to something, to achieve. Bessie not only sight reads the music but feels the notes she plays. Mrs. LaFollette provides affirmation, while her mother offers only criticism. Under her teacher’s tutelage, Bessie begins to have dreams of becoming a composer or conductor.

Mrs. LaFollette suggests that Bessie apply to the new High School of Music and Art, near City College in Manhattan. She guides Bessie toward perfecting the standard piano pieces she’ll be asked to play for the performance exams. They practice everything she’ll be tested on, including musical symbols and terminology. Bessie is accepted and even her mother acknowledges Bessie’s hard work and musical gifts. For the next four years, music allows Bessie the opportunity to learn alongside the most extraordinary musicians and visual artists from all five boroughs of New York. There she is exposed to creative thought, interesting friends, famed musicians, and performance opportunities. She is required to play a second instrument at M&A, so Bessie takes up the flute. The school’s founder, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, inspires the Class of 1941 to continue to create the beauty of their art in post-secondary pursuits.

Bessie enters Hunter College as a music major, the only affordable choice to continue her schooling, just as World War II begins. She continues her music lessons with Dorothea LaFollette, lives at home, and earns money to contribute to the family household by taking on a dozen young piano students. As the end of her Hunter College days near, Bessie’s older sister, Sylvia, submits photographs to the Miss New York City competition knowing there’s a talent component and a win that offers cash and a future. She convinces Bessie that it isn’t just a beauty contest. In both the Miss New York City contest and the Miss America pageant, Bess flawlessly plays Edvard Grieg’s powerful Piano Concerto in A Minor, a piece she tirelessly worked on with Dorothea. She follows this with Gershwin’s popular “Summertime” on the flute, enthralling the crowd with her expressive performance.

Near the end of her reign as Miss America, in the spring of 1946, Bess is invited to play with the entire New York Philharmonic in a “pop” concert at Carnegie Hall, a dream come true. As always, she prepares with her beloved piano teacher Mrs. LaFollette and plays “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” a piece adapted from the third movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. They practice Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu” for her encore.

Despite her performance being a resounding success and her appearance a crowd pleaser, the now adult Bess Myerson doesn’t think she’s good enough for a career as a soloist. She realizes that if she hadn’t been Miss America, she never would have had the chance to play at Carnegie Hall. Bess never loses her talent, and continues to play piano later in her life, including on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1960. But music remains only an avocation for Bess, as family responsibilities, her public sector work, and advocacy for Jewish causes become the focus of her later life.

To listen to all the music referenced in Bessie, go to the Spotify playlist titled Bessie here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2pT08ibRmqfa7IwMVTHAB7

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Linda Kass is the author of two previous historical novels, Tasa’s Song and A Ritchie Boy, the 2021 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Historical Fiction. Her third novel, Bessie, was named A Hasty Book List Most-Anticipated Historical Fiction Title for 2023. Linda began her career as a magazine journalist and correspondent for regional and national publications. She is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookstore in Columbus, Ohio. Find her online at lindakass.com

Photo by Lorn Spolter