Bess Myerson. Born 1924. The Bronx. Died 2014. In California.

Studied music. Tried modeling. In 1945, in a borrowed bathing suit, became Miss New York. Then the first Jewish Miss America.

Next, television. Politics. New Yorker Bess became a commissioner. She tried for senator. She campaigned with Ed Koch. She had a couple of husbands. One helped create a daughter named Barra Grant. She had a couple of lovers. One brought her a headlined law case that nearly brought her to jail.

Full disclosure. Bess was my friend. Four months she was on trial for being mixed up with this married guy who was a major mix-up. Each day, after court, she’d come over for dinner. People would ask, “Can you tell us where Bess is?” I’d say “No.” That was the truth. I couldn’t. Bess was my friend.

Now daughter Barra’s written the one-woman play “Miss America’s Ugly Daughter.” Subtitle: “Bess Myerson & Me.” She performs this “heartbreaking comedy,” which opens a week after New Year’s at the 145-seat Marjorie Deane Theater, 64th and Broadway.

Barra: “Every note I wrote had her in it. When you’re young, you’re fat, buck teeth, depressed, 5-foot-9 at age 12 and your mother says: ‘Stand like that, you’ll look like a pigeon.’ Difficult. My salvation became books. Reading. In a restaurant, she’d smack me and say, ‘Why aren’t you happy?’ That stuff stays with you. It was, ‘Why me, Lord?’”

Did Barra have therapy?

“Yes, but back then I’d rather have had another cookie … Look, my narcissist mother had no sense of humor. Nor did her mom. Bess didn’t even like her own mother, who said, ‘I don’t know how she won a beauty contest.’”

There was a time Bess was caught shoplifting.

“Because she felt she deserved it. She got free food because she’d done one person at the grocery a favor. She hated to pay the maid. She’d say, ‘The girl lives free. She eats here free.’ She’d take tops off lipsticks to see the colors she wanted to take.”

OK, so now the show.

“I’m an actress and a writer so I know how to do this. It took a year to write and received great reviews on the coast.”

What about when Bess was on trial with her lover Andy Capasso? I knew him. I went to their Hamptons house. I had dinner with them.

“I know that. What I don’t know and can’t imagine is her being in love with a Mafia man. Or trying to influence the judge. That trial nearly killed her.”

Barra’s come out of it all with a daughter she adores, a late husband she adored and the sense of humor she’s putting on a stage.

B’way houses full!

No room at the inn. No theaters available. For “Almost Famous,” based on a film that won an Academy Award — there is no available house. “The Wrong Man,” about a dude incarcerated for murder, is currently playing at the MCC — but hasn’t found a Broadway home. They’re all full. Doing better than our skyscrapers. But if you are going to a theater, see “The Great Society” at the Vivian Beaumont. It’s the saga of LBJ. The show and Brian Cox are marvelous.

Auto manic

Complaint. Enough already with automobile shows. It’s Leno schlepping in a car for TV. Seinfeld schlepping in a car for TV. Corden schlepping in a car for TV. What’s the next video venue — laundromats?

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Senior: “I bought a hearing aid. Cost $2,000, but it’s state of the art.”

Friend: “What kind is it?” Guy: “A quarter to 12.”

Told only in New York (on Park Avenue), kids, only in New York.