Nostalgic ride with beauties
The subways used to be a lot prettier.
The timeless beauties who once reigned as “Miss Subways,” and had their faces plastered on train posters, are having a reunion at Ellen’s Stardust Diner in Times Square May 2.
The stunning straphangers would apply for the bimonthly contest, which ran from 1941 to 1976, by sending in their photo. Three winners, now in their 80s, recalled how they became local celebrities after their pictures appeared on 14,000 train placards for 6 million daily commuters to admire.
Ellen Hart, Miss Subways March-April 1959, recalled getting handwritten marriage proposals.
“I don’t even know to this day how they got my address,” she told The Post. “I was only going on 18, so I think I was not ready for marriage.
“Although back in the day they told you that if you were 21, you were an old maid,” recalled Hart, who is now the owner of the famed diner that bears her name.
Now 82, Hart was a senior at Jamaica HS in Queens, and had just won best-looking in her class, when she applied. “My whole neighborhood encouraged me to send in my picture,” she said.
Mary Gardiner Timoney, Miss Subways May-June 1953, grew up in Washington Heights and was working for Scandinavian Airlines when her female boss sent in her photo.
“I got a postcard, which I still have, and it said, ‘You have been invited as a possible Miss Subways to come for an interview,’ ” recalled Timoney, now 89 and living in Lakewood, NJ. “Well, I nearly died. I was a very timid person.”
Timoney’s poster got the attention of Radio City Music Hall producer Leon Leonidoff, who hired her to be a model in stage shows. “What is she doing sitting behind a desk?” he told her relative.
Jackson Heights native Dolores Mitchell Byrne, Miss Subways January-February 1961, took home the title at 17 after her sister submitted her photo. At the time, Byrne, now 81, was working in Rockefeller Center as a switchboard operator. About two years later, she landed a modeling contract.
“I wound up doing a lot of catalog work,” explained Byrne, who lives in Manhasset, LI. “After I got married, I had children and put them into modeling, and then my husband. We did family modeling.”
I was only going on 18, so I think I was not ready for marriage. Although back in the day they told you that if you were 21, you were an old maid.
— Ellen Hart, Miss Subways March-April 1959, on marriage proposals she received