At a Reunion, the Glamorous Faces of a New York Beer Here is a question that no one asks of a Miss Subways: Does a Miss Rheingold miss Rheingold? And here is a question that no one asks of you, the reader: Do we have to explain Miss Rheingold - the cultural significance, and all that? The contest, the glamour, the year of stardom, the unassailable, unforgettable niche in the consciousness of New York, once upon a time? So now let us consider famous Miss Rheingolds. And that first question. "I didn't even like beer," said Anne Newman Bacal, who was a Miss Rheingold finalist in 1960. I was drinking Scotch. Not in Rheingold advertisements or commercials, though. When the flashbulbs were popping and the cameras were rolling and the crowds were swarming, she could not even raise a glass. "We could hold the glass," she said. We could serve it to other people. But drink the beer that made them famous? Not in public. And that was not a problem, said Robin Bain Gauderi, who was Miss Rheingold 1959. "A lot of us really didn't drink at all," she said. If there were not Miss Rheingolds from sea to shining sea - Rheingold was a New York brand, and its expansion to California in the 1960s doomed a brewing company that once had roughly 35 percent of the market - there were Miss Rheingolds from World's Fair to World's Fair. The first Miss Rheingold stepped into the spotlight at the 1939 World's Fair, the last at the 1964 World's Fair, the two World's Fairs in - where else? - New York. Those were the days of sky-blue dresses with matching sky-blue pumps, white purses and white gloves and, one year, of beer cans with the finalists" pictures above the label. "That's my mother on the side," said Bob Merrill, the son of Miss Rheingold 1956, Hillie Merritt Mahoney. Who had a fully intact six-pack? Someone who sold it on eBay to Mrs. Bacal. "I paid $40 for that," she said. Some aficionados say the Miss Rheingold campaigns year after year were predecessors of "American Idol," because ordinary people could vote for one of the finalists. One finalist bragged, "I got 20 million votes - I would have beaten Nixon." Every vote was counted, according to Walter H. Liebman, whose family founded the brewery in 1854. "We did it by weighing them" after first sorting them, finalist by finalist, he said. Yana Paskova for The New York TimesA six pack of Rheingold beer featuring contestants for Miss Rheingold at the New-York Historical Society. There were finalists who became famous without winning, like Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren, and some Miss Rheingolds were a Miss in title only. Mrs. Mahoney said the legendary gossip columnist and broadcaster Walter Winchell found out that she was already married and had a 2-year-old son when she was chosen. Winchell went on the air and broke the news to all the ships at sea: "Miss Rheingold is really a Mrs." Some Miss Rheingolds who were a Miss when they entered the contest became a Mrs. because of it. Mrs. Bacal told how she met the man she later married after she became a finalist, and how he smuggled himself into her hotel suite in a laundry cart. And how their first kiss took place in that laundry cart. And how she then spirited him - and the laundry cart, with him still in it - out of the suite. "We were well-chaperoned," she said. Besides, my roommate would have sent him away if I hadn't. But the laundry-cart episode apparently impressed the roommate, another finalist. "She said: "You'd better stick with that guy. I don't know who else you could date who'd do that,"" Ms. Bacal recalled. She and four Miss Rheingolds attended a party on Wednesday for the opening of the New-York Historical Society's exhibition "Beer Here: Brewing New York's History," which continues through Sept. As Mrs. Mahoney looked at the display of the floor-length gown she had worn as Miss Rheingold 1956, the president of the historical society, Louise Mirrer, said she had a soft spot for Rheingold, which went out of business in 1976. "I longed to be a Miss Rheingold," Dr. Mirrer said. My greatest ambition. What little girl in New York didn't want to be Miss Rheingold? But Dr. Mirrer was too young to try out. "The first time I was allowed to travel by myself was to go to the World's Fair," she said. The one in 1964. And she was hardly the only Miss Rheingold fan at the historical society party who still harbored a sense of loss. "They ended the contest," recalled Rick Goeren, a photo archivist who was 12 in 1964 and went on to collect scrapbooks of Miss Rheingold memorabilia, "and I said, "This can't be happening.""