Who Is This Woman Selected As “Miss Panic For 1948”?

If a bizarre pose, pointy brassiere and looking up somebody’s nostrils are considered sexy then this photo has the necessary boxes checked.

The caption on the rear of the photo says:

“Candis Leo age 19 from West McHenry (Illinois) is selected to be Miss Panic for 1948.” (credit: unidentified February 2, 1948)

Besides the unusual pose, why is this publicity photo a complete failure?

For one, the woman in the picture is identified as Candis Leo.

It is not.

Searching every archive imaginable there is no such person in any database.

We later were to discover the name was misspelled on the news photo slug and was supposed to read Candis Lee. The only problem with that, is that the model’s real name is not Candis Lee either.

Next, what exactly is “Miss Panic”?

Searching for “Miss Panic” yielded only one relevant result.  The February 17, 1948 issue of Variety mentions the following item out of Chicago:

“The Grand (Theater) came up with its first foreign picture in “Panic” and did everything in its power to ballyhoo the French product even staging a beauty contest to select ‘Miss Panic’. Reviewers for the most part found the picture ‘dull and unattractive.’ But the first week’s gross was a reasonably gratifying $17,000.”

Looking for “Panic” on IMDB.com led to nothing because its title in French is Panique. The “dull and unattractive” film, written and directed by Julien Duvivier is today considered a classic.

It took digging into small town newspaper archives to find a newspaper that was able to figure out the mess-up.

The McHenry Plaindealer
February 12, 1948.

McHenry friends are this week proudly displaying newspaper pictures of Rose Matzat, formerly of McCullom Lake, who has been making a bid for fame as a beauty in recent days. Miss Matzat was easily recognized by her friends, although the caption listed her as Candis Lee.

Last week Miss Lee, 19, a graduate of the local high school, with the class of 1947, now a resident of Lakeside Avenue, Chicago was voted by newspaper columnists as most likely to panic Chicago males. She was selected Miss Panic over many other beauties entered by various modeling agencies.

Just a few hours later she was named Miss Buda Marine at the Navy Pier boat show.

Mystery solved.

A little over one year later, the Plaindealer announced that Rose Marie Matzat had married Robert Kane of Chicago. The article also notes that Rose had been the winner of several beauty contests over the past two years.

The final mention of Rose that we could find was for winning a trophy and a cash prize and the title of “MIss Colonel of 1950” in a Miami Florida Beauty contest.