“My Name is Leona Gage: Won’t Somebody Please Help Me” – I mean, how could I possibly resist such a title and photo on a pulpy (not cheap!) 1965 paperback?  But why do I even have this book? 

Let me explain.  It’s all Peter Lorre’s fault.  Peter Lorre is one of the actors that I have my DVR record all appearances.  When I saw that “Tales of Terror” (1962) had been recorded and that Debra Paget, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price were in the mix, I watched it pretty quickly.  But WHO is this beautiful woman playing Morella and strangling Vincent Price while fire rages all around!?!?!  Pause. IMDb.  Leona Gage.  A one-time Miss USA who was de-crowned after a SINGLE day because they found she was married.  I’m all over this; eBay searches here we go.  Leona’s book of her life is like a pulp-fiction novel made of the stuff for a Hollywood screenplay. Five suicide attempts, losing custody of her children, doing drugs wuth and dating John Barrymore Jr, etc. Unfortunately, there's so very little talk about the details of her acting career. Literally not mentioning "Tales of Terror" or Vincent Price at all (she's not mentioned in his biography either). I laughed out loud when I read the section where she seduced a 21-year-old gay kid from Beauty School to show him what "normal sex" was about. "I could feel his manhood strengthening and then I sheathed his force with my own". Oh myyyyyy!

My eBay search pops up every day with a different Leona press photo (she got a LOT of press).  I usually just read the captions on them and laugh, but then I found this one with “Leona Gage” handwritten in red pen.  Since there are LITERALLY no examples of a Leona Gage autograph to be found on the Internet, I’m going with, “Yes, she signed this”.  (Not some clerk who was putting it into an AP filing cabinet.  Nope that can’t be it.)  I just had to show the book and photo because Leona was too TOO much to pass up.

Here's a great link of her on TV with Ernie Kovacks from 1957 explaining how she entered the contest, got the Miss USA title and then got de-throned. She's so beautiful, shy and endearing:

Then I realized, umm, don’t I have other Miss USA Winners.  Off to Wikipedia for the page on Miss USA Title Winners to cross-reference with my autograph log.  So here we go –  

Carol Morris – wins the Miss USA title and other titles and goes through the Hollywood gristmill, posing for lots of cheesecake photos and starring in “Born to Be Loved” . Yes, when you're beautiful, you are.

Shawn Weatherly – I don’t know why I wrote to her back in the day … hmm. Or maybe somebody else got it and gave it to me (because my log just shows "Received". Maybe I recognize her because she was in "Police Academy 3"

Michelle Royer – No scandal, no Hollywood, married and laid back with her Banana Johnson.  Stop!  That’s her husband’s name Donald “Banana Don” Johnson.  Lucky his first name wasn’t Richard.  Dick Banana Johnson would just be a triple threat of penis euphemisms.