Eric Morley; British Entrepreneur Created Miss World Beauty Pageant

Eric Morley, 82, the millionaire entrepreneur who created the Miss World beauty pageant. Morley began his career in 1946 when he left the Army and became an entertainment publicist. He later introduced commercial bingo to Britain and created “Come Dancing,� a show about ballroom dancing that became the world’s longest-running television series. He ran for Parliament in 1979 and narrowly lost. The London-born Morley had not intended the Miss World pageant to be an annual event when he organized a bathing beauty contest for the 1951 Festival of Britain. But the next year, the United States inaugurated the rival Miss Universe pageant, and Morley couldn’t resist the challenge. In 1997, the Miss World contest had a television audience of more than 2.5 billion people in 155 countries. It regularly courted controversy, with critics saying it was demeaning to women. But Morley was unrepentant: “If it is shameful to women, then the best thing they can do is to turn it off,� he once said. On Wednesday of a heart attack in London.