While the Boardwalk Empire themed Miss'd America Pageant was being held in Atlantic City, the HBO series based on 1920-era A.C. picked up two Golden Globes.
Sunday night's televised Golden Globe awards was a sure bet for HBO's Boardwalk Empire coming in.
According to series co-creator Terrence Winter, however, it was a pleasant surprise.
"I am pretty confident that I speak for everyone onstage when I say, 'Holy effing crap; we just won a Golden Globe!" said Winter, as he accepted the Golden Globe for best drama series on TV.
It was the first major awards show to honor Boardwalk Empire in its debut season. The show — and HBO, who took home a total of four Golden Globes altogether — will have more opportunities to win big in the next several weeks at other industry award ceremonies.
The show, which stars Steve Buscemi as Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, based on the real-life Atlantic City political boss of the 1920s, Nucky Johnson, has already been picked up for a second season by HBO.
Buscemi took home the show's second award of the night — his first-ever Golden Globe win — coming out on top in the best actor in a drama series category.
"I hope we do [the show] for years and years and years," Buscemi said Sunday night.
Vicki Gold Levi, an Atlantic City historian and a consultant on Boardwalk Empire — for the second season as well, she has informed Atlantic City Weekly — was one of eight celebrity judges at a drag-queen pageant in Atlantic City while the awards program was being televised.
When she found out that Boardwalk Empire had won the two awards, she notified the host of the show, Robert Hitchen, also known by his drag queen moniker "Sandy Beach," who interrupted the Miss'd America Pageant for a moment to deliver the good news to the more than 1,000 people gathered for Atlantic City's annual Miss America spoof show.
The crowd inside Boardwalk Hall's Adrian Philips Ballroom cheered with applause upon the announcement before getting back to the business of crowning the 2011 Miss'd America, which went to Miss Kitty Hiccups.
Coincidentally, on the night that Boardwalk Empire took home its first major awards, in Atlantic City, the Miss'd America Pageant was presented with a Boardwalk Empire theme.
Click here to watch video from the Miss'd America festivities.
Dubbed Boardwalk Empress, the pageant's program consisted of several Boardwalk Empire-era scenes and numbers, including the songs "Speakeasy Nights," "They Had it Coming," and the extravagant dance-production number "A Prohibition Exhibition, Knockers Johnson's Boots N' Legs Review," which starred Erika Schiff and the Miss'd America Dancers.
Host Hitchen, dressed in drag for most of the night, traded the spotlight with comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer, who was equally funny and spot on for the entire two-and-half hour show.
2010 Miss'd America Michelle Dupree nearly stole the show with her farewell video and segment, but by the show's end the attention was all directed to Miss Kitty Hiccups, who Dupree crowned as 2011's Miss'd America.
The rather raunchy program was written and staged by Hitchen, who spoke about the night's presenting sponsor, Resorts Atlantic City, with a touch of nostalgia ("I slept with my first men there," Hitchen declared to the crowd), and who, between performing some of the show-host duties, starred in the Boardwalk Empress numbers (as Knockers Johnson) with fellow show members Lucy Luckiano, Allie Capone and Sonora Carver.
The celebrity judges included New York columnist Michael Musto; Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal; WAYV radio personality Diane Mitchell, Cher impersonator Steven Andrade; Gold-Levi; local writer Sheree Bykofsky; TV personality Ryan Nickalus and TV's Ms. Coco Peru.
Just after 8pm, a brilliant spoof of the opening-credits sequence of Boardwalk Empire was played on the two large video screens in the ballroom. Hitchen stars in the video, doing a hilarious take on Steve Buscemi's Nucky Johnson character in the opening sequence of the HBO show.
The video was shot the week prior, on a very cold Wednesday on the Atlantic City beach.
The second season of HBO's highly acclaimed drama series Boardwalk Empire, set in 1920s-era Atlantic City, premieres in late September.
Boardwalk Empire picked up a couple more awards last night from the Screen Actors Guild. The SAGs are the most prestigious awards next to the Oscars, since the SAGs are voted on by a performer’s peers.
The openly gay comic takes the reigns of the city's newest tradition, Miss'd America, which takes place at Boardwalk Hall Sunday, Jan. 16.
Sometimes, recessions can present unexpected opportunities. For members of the Atlantic City region's gay and lesbian community, what might be called a civil rights struggle, an attempt to form a real community or even just an effort to create some kind of gay social life in the area, also has one other good thing going for it.
So last week, there was Hitchen, head to toe decked out as “Knockers Johnson,” filming the opening skit for this year’s pageant on the beach. Other characters were Lucy Luckyano and Ally Capone, possibly the first time some of America’s most famous gangsters ....
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