The standards for Dartmouth's "Queen of the Snows" competition, which began in 1923, demanded more than just good looks from the women who chose to participate. When Mary Warren was selected as the first Queen in 1923, she exuded "not only beauty but the spirit of New Hampshire snows, and Hanover winters grace her personality and her costume," the characteristics requisite of a Queen, as outlined in 1929 guidelines for the competition.
As part of her duties, the Carnival Queen made appearances, awarded trophies and posed for pictures for the New England press. The Queen was a symbol of Winter Carnival and a prominent Dartmouth tradition before the College became coeducational. The competition was especially popular from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Fifteen Dartmouth students were dispatched to each nominate three of the most beautiful Carnival attendees for the Queen's Court, according to competition guidelines. The Queen's Court would then assemble on Friday evening in the Alumni Gymnasium to be interviewed and surveyed by a panel of five judges. This panel was composed of three student leaders, a professional photographer and visiting dignitary.
"Escorted to the Executioner's Table,' the girls are asked a series of questions, such as, What if you came to Dartmouth and found your date had grown a beard?' or, How do you like the Jackie Kennedy look?'" the Ford Times reported about the selection process in 1963. "Trim in their ski clothes, the lovely girls smilingly gave their answers."
In 1928, the Boston Herald hailed Dartmouth's Carnival Queen Florence Rice as "one of the prettiest queens ever chosen ... she might give many a movie star a race in a beauty contest."
James Taylor '57 said Carnival was historically a major event, not only for College students but also for the visitors it attracted from near and far.
"Winter Carnival was a big deal in the East," Taylor said. "It was the major collegiate social event of the winter season. The influx of young women from up and down the East Coast colleges, and elsewhere too, was pretty amazing."
Although Winter Carnival, known as Winter Meet when it began 1910, originated as a sporting event, students quickly realized that women would be a key element of the event's continuing success.
"It is up to every man with a purse or a heart, or a bit of enthusiasm for a good time when it heaves in sight, to make haste to procure that most necessary item," according to a 1911 issue of The Dartmouth.
During the first official Winter Carnival in 1911, only 50 women came to Hanover. By the 1950s, there were about 2,000 women, the New York Herald Tribune reported in 1957.
Before Dartmouth went coed in 1972, men had a different attitude toward Winter Carnival, according to Edward Abbey '54.
"The attitude we had is so different than the attitude of today's Dartmouth guy with a coed school, and also it's very different from my friends who went to coed high schools or even coed prep schools because girls were a scarce product," Abbey said. "We thought Queen of the Snows was great. We thought Winter Carnival was great because it brought young ladies to campus."
In 1929 the Dartmouth Outing Club created pamphlets titled "To a Lady," which recommended proper attire for female guests.
"We wish you to look pretty and warm, not expensive and cold," the pamphlet said.
Women arrived in Hanover in buses, cars and trains from across the Northeast, with most coming from the Seven Sisters colleges Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College and Wellesley College. Taking the pamphlet's advice, they dressed in trousers, warm sweaters, heavy moccasins and sport clothes.
When women arrived in Hanover for the weekend, they changed out of their "lacy and silken finery, perfectly suitable for an afternoon tea dance at the Biltmore," a 1923 issue of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern reported. Dartmouth men selected the Carnival Queen from these "comfortably" dressed women, according to the Jack-O-Lantern.
"There was no such thing as feminism that it's bad to be a beauty queen at that time," Abbey said.
The ideal Queen of the Snows was "the fairest and loveliest of breathtaking Carnival beauties ... that one who most typifies the atmosphere and spirit of this Dartmouth Outdoor Carnival of ice and snow," according to the 1928 guidelines.
The Queen's coronation was a lavish affair, complete with a court of men and women.
The 1931 coronation experienced a sudden power failure, corrected just before the Queen's arrival, while the 1947 ceremony involved smoke flares and a mass of eager photographers.
"One of the things that was funny was that the princesses would be asked to come forward, and they had to walk through skis raised overhead," Hunt Whitacre '64 said. "They had a group of men who were standing to make an aisle for the princess or the Queen to come through and they used skis to provide a top to the corridor. It fit in with the whole atmosphere of Winter Carnival weekend."
Building on the tradition of quaint and sometimes extravagant coronations, the 1951 Queen, Susan Darrah, was crowned by Barbara Ann Scott, a former Olympic figure skating champion. Like Carnival Queens before her, Darrah was confronted with the difficulty of balancing her royal responsibilities with spending time with her Dartmouth date.
"Traditionally, the escort of a Dartmouth Carnival Queen can figuratively kiss his date goodbye for the weekend," the Boston Herald reported in 1951. However, Darrah's date, David Saxton '51, embraced his role as de facto king, according to the Boston Herald.
Margee Farnum Cullinan, then a freshman at the all-female Colby Junior College, was crowned the last Carnival Queen in 1972.
The Queen of the Snows tradition was discontinued in 1973 in response to the advent of coeducation at Dartmouth and the growing feminism movement of the 1970s.
Cullinan expressed her excitement at being selected Carnival Queen when interviewed by the New Hampshire Union Leader in 1973.
"I took a course this year on contemporary woman," Cullinan said. "It was a woman's [liberation] type course, but today I'm really glad to be a woman. It's just great to be feminine."
By the late 1960s, the Queen of the Snows tradition did not enjoy the same prominence as it did in earlier years, Peter Rufleth '72 said. Despite the pageant's decline in popularity, no great controversy accompanied the end of the tradition, he said.
"The big things that were going on at that time were Vietnam, Laos, the draft those were the things that certainly dominated those years," Rufleth said. "I don't think that people really felt a really strong feeling one way or the other about the Queen [competition]."
Descriptions of the Queen of the Snows ceremony garnered mixed responses from today's Dartmouth students.
Some students interviewed by The Dartmouth said the Carnival Queen was a "cute" tradition. Others, like Deanna Portero '12, said they view the Carnival Queen selection process as a "highly objectified" treatment of women.
"Queen of the Snows represents to me a celebration of the domestic female," she said.
