Story highlights Bess Myerson was noted Miss America winner, New York figure

Myerson was later caught in a scandal

Beauty queen was TV personality, public servant

(CNN) Bess Myerson, the 1945 Miss America winner who became a celebrated media personality and public servant and then was brought down by scandal, has died. She was 90.

According to a statement from the Miss America Organization , she died in Santa Monica, California, on December 14. No cause of death was given.

Myerson's rise to fame was a classic rags-to-riches American success story: a bright Bronx girl from a housing project, the daughter of a house painter, who won the nation's most famous beauty contest and parlayed her renown into a media career. She became a model and spokesperson and spent many years on the game show "I've Got a Secret."

The path to celebrity was one followed by such pageant winners as Lee Meriwether, Mary Ann Mobley, Phyllis George and Vanessa Williams.

Miss America winner Bess Myerson.

Later Myerson became part of New York's city government, serving as both commissioner of consumer affairs and commissioner of cultural affairs.

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