Beverly Johnson Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Her History-Making Vogue Cover with a One-Woman Play

But about that cover: It’s something that Johnson manifested. After model maven Eileen Ford told her it would never happen, the model left her agency and joined Wilhelmina, run by Wilhelmina Cooper, a model-turned-agent who had her feet up on the desk, a cigarette in one hand, and a slice of pizza in the other at their first meeting. 

When she later delivered the good news about Vogue, however, Cooper had a phone receiver in her hand. Johnson was in bed when the phone rang, and in her rush to get to the newsstand forgot her wallet. “That’s me,” she tried to explain to the newsagent, gesturing to an issue of Vogue, to no avail. It was a life-changing event, in ways positive and otherwise.

Lisa Fonssagrives, the top model of the 1950s, once described herself as a clothes hanger; in contrast, Johnson rarely mentions clothes but describes herself as having having a “big mouth,” meaning she wouldn’t stay silent: not about her experience with Bill Cosby, or about her failures as well as her successes. There’s little sugarcoating. “My scars and my mistakes and my learning process can be exposed in a way that’s not unapologetic, but also not sensationalized—because I’m too old to be sensationalized,” says Johnson. “This is my story, it’s totally true—as my daughter would say, a little bit too true. And as my brothers and sisters say, ‘Can’t you keep anything to yourself?’”