Artistic and sensitive, Harth kept to herself at school, but she also had a flair for fashion and a head for business. She found herself immersed in studying lifestyle (beauty, design, fashion), deconstructing how people lived and, more importantly, how she could make a living. She wanted to model. One day she played hooky from school, hopped on the train into the city, and went to the Ford Modeling Agency. She made it through the front door but was told she wasn’t tall enough. Undaunted, she modeled in fashion shows, casting her aspirations toward making the scene at Studio 54, surreptitiously mastering the art of posing.
“I like to pose. I like the whole scene with photography. I used to study art books. Francesco Scavullo—a book of portraits, his makeover book, with before and after shots. I studied that book and still know the words by heart. I saw the power of makeup and how it took someone plain and ordinary and made the transformation to sultry, stunning beauty.”
At school she volunteered to be the makeup artist for school plays. She kept the tools of her trade in an orange fishing tackle box. She made up one actress to look like Cleopatra—her first masterpiece. Then she got a job at a Gyro joint on Long Island called Parthenon, where she met her husband. “It was not love at first sight,” she is quick to point out. Definitely not glam, she was forced to wear a hairnet and couldn’t wait to get home to wash away the grease that had seeped into her pores. Still, she kept at it for eight months. There was one small perk: her boss, George Houraney, owned a national magazine.
The National Motor Sports Annual covered all aspects of car racing. Harth started accompanying George Houraney to the races to sell the magazine at the racing stands. Her intention was to make enough money to go back to college, but she also wanted to continue to pursue modeling. She spent most of her time traveling with Houraney to racetracks across the country. She didn’t get into modeling right away. Those opportunities came later.
The magazine had a pullout calendar, strictly automotive. One major sponsor, the men’s cologne English Leather, bought advertising in the magazine. By this time Harth was doing more than selling magazines and now she sold display advertising and coordinated the publication’s printing. She was in the meeting with Houraney and the top brass of English Leather when the calendar girl contest was born. Adding beauty and glamour, albeit cheesecake, to the pullout calendar grew to become a full-fledged beauty contest.
Harth’s role kept expanding from 1979 to 1998. “The American Dream Calendar Girl was our baby. I’m very proud of my work. It almost feels like a lifetime ago. That part of my life was being a model. A role model to these girls, and I had to learn on the job. Those were my glamorous years.”
The contest that began with 50 contestants evolved to have thousands of contestants each year. Over time it attracted billionaire sponsors. Contest events staged in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Bahamas and Hollywood became a major attraction for the high rollers. Harth managed most of the logistics and essentially became the producer of the event.
George Houraney and Jill Harth now evolved far beyond the magazine business to become co-producers of American Dream Enterprise. Together both professionally and as a couple, Houraney and Harth did not get married until 1995 at Disney World in Florida. Harth recalls it being super cold, the coldest day on record in Orlando. After being together for so long, there were various reasons to get married. Harth cites the number one reason was because of Trump, “because of the amount of unrest he brought to my life.”
The backstory of Trump’s involvement with Houraney and Harth (from 1992 to 1998) has been fodder for the media. Trump had directed them to organize a calendar contest at the Trump Castle in Atlantic City. The event became known as the Donald J Trump American Dream Festival. The full-scale production encompassed a calendar girl competition. international custom car event, a music competition with original music, a comedy event. and entertainment spanning over four or five days. Houraney and Harth would later accuse Trump of sexually harassing Harth in what erupted into a media maelstrom. Shortly thereafter, both her career and her marriage came to a tumultuous end.