Maureen Hingert Miss Universal 1955 Fort Bowie Staring Ben Johnson

Jan Harrison, Kent Taylor – By Patrick Ranasinghe

Miss Universal Beauty Pageant 1955 July 22 Maureen Hingert 2nd Runner up Miss Universe Beauty Pageant Clip and The Movie “Fort Bowie”
Starring Ben Johnson, Jan Harrison, Kent Taylor, & Maureen Hingert as Jana Davi 1955 Miss Universe Beauty Pageant Long Beach Municipal Auditorium Long Beach, California, USA July 22

Winner: SWEDEN – Hillevi Rombin
1st Runner Up: EL SALVADOR – Maribel Arrieta Gálvez
2nd Runner Up: CEYLON [SRI LANKA] – Maureen Neliya Hingert
3rd Runner Up: GERMANY – Margit Nünke
4th Runner Up: JAPAN – Keiko Takahashii

Maureen Neliya Hingert (born January 9) is a Sri Lankan dancer, model and actress. She is the only Sri Lankan representative to win an award at a Miss Universe pageant after finishing as the runner-up at the 1955 event. She was heralded a favorite for the world beauty crown together with “Miss Sweden,” “Miss USA,” “Miss England,” and “Miss El Salvador.”

Due to her very high placement in the Miss Universe Pageant, she has long been revered as “putting Sri Lanka on the map” and being an ambassador to her country, Sri Lanka.

Hingert was born on January 9, 1937 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her father was a bank clerk. Both her parents were of middle class (Ceylon) Dutch Burgher ancestry. The family lived in one of a row of small tenement houses on Lorensz Road, Bambalapitiya, Colombo.

Hingert attended school at the Holy Family Convent in Colombo until she was eighteen In 1955, Hingert was crowned Miss Ceylon in her country and subsequently selected as a contestant in the 1955 Miss Universe pageant.

Following the contest, Hingert was put under contract to Universal International Studios and 20th Century Fox. Some of the movies she appeared in include: The King and I, Fort Bowie, Gun Fever, The Adventures of Hiram Holiday, Moroccan Halk Moth, Pillars of the Sky, Dangerous Search, Gunman from Laredo, The Rawhide Trail and the British TV Series Captain David Grief.

She was also a dancer and gave solo performances at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and other major Los Angeles venues.

She married designer/artist Mario Armond Zamparelli in 1958. Mario Armond Zamparelli was an American artist and designer, best known for his connection with Howard Hughes. For 18 years, Zamparelli was Chief Executive Designer of Hughes’ empire, and also designed airplane interiors for TWA, the airline then owned by Hughes. They had three daughters, one of whom, Gina Zamparelli, achieved fame in the arts as a concert promoter and is active in the field of historic preservation.