Did Miss USA of 1966 really save Montecarlo's teatro from destruction?

The Teatro dei Rassicurati is a pearl of Montecarlo, one of the smallest theaters in Italy but profoundly elegant, with its graceful oval shape and richly textured wooden panels covered with geometric floral motifs. While its exterior is unassuming, a tour of Montecarlo can’t be considered complete without looking inside the charming Teatro, first commissioned in 1795.

A translation of the inscription in the upper left could
read: To the antique theater of the Academy, dear
to Giacomo Puccini, best wishes for your rebirth.

While its history is largely documented, on the walls of the lobby is a mysterious framed and signed photo of Maria Remenyi, Miss USA of 1966. Surely the reason for this photo was once well known, but now few people know how and why the photo came to be affixed there. Chiara Boldrini, a part-time guide at the Montecarlo tourist information office, said that she has heard unsubstantiated “legends” that Miss Remenyi “saved the theater” when it was marked for destruction in the mid-1960s, but Chiara seemed skeptical about this.

It is true that after World War I, the theater underwent a period of decay, so much so that in the 1960s, it was designated by the mayor to be torn down and made into a parking lot. It was unused, crumbling and dangerous, and no one had the money or will to restore it. Official sources in Montecarlo credit the rescue effort to the intervention to Professor Mario Tori, who roused the populous to the cause. Tori also enlisted the help of Italia Nostra, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of Italy’s historical, artistic and environmental patrimony. After a period of restoration, the theater re-opened in 1973.

So what part, if any, did Maria Remenyi play in the intervention? Did Miss USA truly visit Montecarlo? Does her family have roots in Tuscany or somewhere else in Italy? Two local tour guides I queried couldn’t answer these questions. Neither could they provide me with any details about her life and relationship to Montecarlo.

It was not difficult to find references on the Internet to Maria Remenyi. Articles about her winning the Miss USA title provide Maria’s background. She is a native of Hungary but was born in Denmark in 1945 while her father was in the Hungarian military. After World War II, the family moved back to Budapest, but in 1954, Maria recounted to the press that her father was imprisoned as a “political undesirable.”

“It was like a bad dream,” she told newspaper reporter Don Royal in 1967. “We lived together—my mother, my sister and two other relatives—in a tiny one-room apartment. There was no bath or toilet in the house, not even hot running water. Food was scarce. When I had an egg or a glass of milk, I thought it was a holiday.

“Once my mother took me to visit my father in prison. He’d been a big husky man. Now he was so thin I hardly recognized him. He leaned over to let me kiss his cheek, and a guard pushed him away.”

Maria’s father was released in 1956 and promptly made himself even more undesirable by participating in a bloody rebellion in Budapest. When the uprising was quelled, the family knew they would have to leave their homeland. Hiding in barns and farmhouses by day and traveling by night, the Remenyis made their way to the Austrian border. After stopovers in detention camps near Vienna and Munich, the family was flown to the United States. They decided to settle in California, where her father’s sister had lived.

Entering school in El Cerrito, Maria described herself as a thin and frightened child who understood no English. Before long, though, she displayed a knack for languages and a genius for mathematics. She graduated high school with honors and studied nuclear physics at the University of California. She worked as a model to earn college money, and her agency encouraged her to enter the Miss Oakland and then the Miss California contest. She not only won those but went on to win the Miss USA title and finish in the top 15 of the Miss Universe competition.

As part of her Miss USA duties, Maria toured the country as a goodwill ambassador in 1966. Following that, she transferred to Columbia University in New York and later moved to Vermont, married and managed a real estate agency and development company. That was about all I could find about her, other than an occasional public appearance at another beauty and talent contest.

As for her relationship to Montecarlo and the Teatro dei Rassicurati, I learned from local guide Elena Benvenuti that Maria was related to Mario Tori and that she did indeed visit the teater, probably in late 1967 or 1968, and that’s how her signed photo came to be placed in the lobby.

During a recent visit to Montecarlo by my daughter Sandra and her family, I took grandkids Clara and Juniper to play in the Montecarlo park. While there, I met another nonno who had brought his young nipote to play, and we struck up a conversation. By fortunate coincidence, this nonno turned out to be Giorgio Tori, the son of Mario Tori, the cousin of Maria Remenyi and current head of the Montecarlo ProLoco (a group which promotes tourism and the good of the community).

Giorgio told me that when his dad returned to Montecarlo after a career as a professor in Roma, he found that the teatro had been condemned for destruction in 1967. Mario immediately began a campaign that included going door-to-door for donations and writing letters to prominent organizations, politicians and celebrities. His cousin Maria had recently become Miss USA, and she came at Mario’s invitation to visit and support the cause, as also did Princess Grace Kelly of the principality of Monaco (also called Monte Carlo). So, as with many legends, there is a distinct grain of truth. Miss USA did help save the teatro, and it is with good reason that her photo remains in the lobby, even if it would be a grand exaggeration to give her the bulk of the credit.