Date 15 July 1985 Placements 10 | Entrants 79 | |
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Venue | ||
Miss Universe 1985, the 34th Miss Universe pageant, was held on 15 July 1985 at the James L. Knight Convention Center in Miami, Florida, United States. Seventy-nine contestants competed in the pageant. Deborah Carthy-Deu of Puerto Rico crowned by Yvonne Ryding of Sweden.
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Host city
In October 1984, the owners of the newly expanded West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Canada showed an interest in hosting the Miss Universe 1985 pageant there. This followed an unsuccessful attempt to host the Miss Universe 1984 pageant in Calgary, Canada the previous year.
Pageant organizers chose to host the pageant in Miami, Florida for the second consecutive year. George Honchar, president of Miss Universe Inc., expressed disappointment at a lack of local support for the event, which cost the city $2 million.
Miss South Africa controversy
In April, 1985 the city of Miami requested that the Miss Universe organization insist that South Africa should not send a representative to pageant, due to the threat of demonstrations over her country's Apartheid policy. In mid May the nation announced that they would not send their titleholder, Andrea Steltzer, to the pageant because of fears for her safety. This was the first time since 1975 that the country did not participate in the pageant; they would not return to the event until 1995. Andrea Steltzer (half South African and half German) took part as Miss Germany in the 1989 Miss Universe pageant where she was a semi-finalist.