Luck can be a lady, or so it says in the song. And Georgia, which needs luck, is pinning its hopes on a lady named Brittany Swann.

The Peach State, despite its well-deserved reputation for producing beauty queens, has never won the Miss USA crown. Never. It has often come close -- tantalizingly close -- but its hopes have been dashed so many times in the past 55 years that people talk about the "Georgia jinx."

Her sunny demeanor shouldn't be taken for a lack of sophistication. When one of our PNB reporters asked her to verify the spelling of her name (it's standard procedure), she noted that the "Brittany" is spelled like the region in France. Wow! And had she ever been to Brittany? "No," she said with a hint of regret, "but Paris is wonderful."

In the very early spring, when everything is new, jinxes can vanish like the winter mist. This really could be Georgia's year.

This is how Amanda Rammell sums herself up: "I wrestle elk on weekends and go around in stiletto heels the rest of the week."

Just a typical American girl.

Well, maybe a bit more typical in Idaho than in the rest of the country. Ms. Rammell spends much of her time in the entertainment media. She's a model, a budding actress and a Miss USA contestant. But when she's on the wildlife ranch where she was raised (near the majestic Tetons), she gets her hands really dirty.

Some beauty queens from the great outdoors laughingly call themselves tomboys. Ms. Rammell doesn't really put it that way. She has been doing feminine things as well as manual labor for years. She was a model at 14, and though she initially shunned pageants, she finally gave it a try and became Miss Idaho Teen USA. So the spotlight is nothing new.

She's interested in medicine, maybe the human kind instead of animal work. But the entertainment world is also calling, and she's right in the middle of it.

"I don't know what to do," she exclaims, with more humor than desperation. "I'm just split in half." We think both halves are very nice.

If Rebecca Jo Elizabeth Moore were not in the Miss USA Pageant, she would make a fine character in an airport novel. She's as lovely as an angel, she has a lilting Southern name and a charming Southern accent, and she says, "I want to be the CEO of an oil company."

Whoa! That last detail took us by surprise. You don't meet many beauty queens who aspire to be energy executives, and some who do harbor such ambitions might not want to admit it now. "Big Oil" has a bad reputation. But many of the thousands of companies in the petroleum business are honest and honorable, and one of them happens to belong to Ms. Moore's family. Give this girl points for frankness.

Ms. Moore, of Alabama, who turned 19 after reaching Los Angeles, is one of the youngsters in this year's contest. She has done competition off an on since age 8 ("I cried in the first one"), and her next goal is modeling, with movies and TV if opportunity knocks. (The oil can wait.)

This land is Kelly George's land. Or certainly a big chunk of it.

She's originally a California girl, from Orange County. But she went all the way across the country to Maryland for her higher education. She turned in some strong performances in the Miss America system in Maryland, thanks to her good looks and Irish stepdancing -- and that propelled her to the National Sweetheart Pageant in Illinois.

Are you dizzy yet?

Ms. George, who is known as Lieutenant George at work, is a public affairs officer. That means she helps explain military actions and decisions to the public. With things being what they are in the world, she's certain there's an overseas assignment in her future, most likely in a combat zone.

But if she wins Miss USA, the best-laid plans of the Pentagon will have to be put on hold. Ms. George will get the most unusual year of TDY (temporary duty) in the history of the U.S. armed forces.

We don't know what that would do for the military, but it would boost a lot of pageant fans' morale.

The Miss USA Pageant was born in Southern California in 1952. It was a reaction to the Miss America Pageant's decision to downplay swimsuits and stop calling itself a beauty contest. Miss USA dared to go in the other direction, declaring itself totally about beauty and putting the swimsuit at center stage.

In retrospect, the new pageant's timing was terrible. The era that Americans remember as "the Fifties" was just beginning (a couple of years behind the calendar, like most such renowned decades). The Fifties were a time of "wholesome" entertainment -- uplifting Hollywood epics, crew-cut rock 'n' roll, family comedies on TV. The Miss America Pageant, which showed a little leg but celebrated the status quo, became bigger than ever. It was one of the most anticipated annual events on television. The slightly racier Miss USA was very much in its shadow.

Even in the 1960s, when pageant haters emerged, they targeted the goodie-two-shoes Miss America rather than the footloose Miss USA. People outside the pageant business couldn't tell the two rival events apart.

But times finally changed, and now the old roles are reversed. Miss America has been marginalized to cable TV, while Miss USA is the gold standard in American pageants. In late 2006 and early 2007, a Miss USA scandal got more positive media attention than the crowning of a new Miss America. Tara Conner, Miss USA 2006, is now one of the most recognized beauties in the world.

They wouldn't have believed it way back in 1952. But let's not stand on reminiscences. There's a lot going on at Miss USA 2007.