Each year tourism chiefs would select six women and transform them into the Brighton Promettes.

Their job was to sell Brighton to the world.

They appeared in newsreels all over the globe, from Australia to Brazil, and became as much a symbol of the town as the Royal Pavilion and the West Pier.

The stylish Promettes were immaculately dressed in hand-made uniforms bearing Brighton's crest, rounded off with air hostess-style hats, high-heeled shoes and dazzling white gloves.

Their job was to answer holidaymakers' questions, hand out tourist information and even light people's cigarettes.

In 1956, the Evening Argus described them as "walking information bureaux with sex appeal".

They were the brainchild of ex-Fleet Street newspaperman Sidney Butterworth, Brighton's publicity director, who thought you could sell anything with a pretty face, a slim figure and a well-turned ankle.

Girls from all over England wrote to his department asking: "Can we be Promettes, please?"

But in the early years at least they were chosen from the Vogue Mannequin School in Holland Road, Hove.

The school taught young ladies how to walk, stand, even take their coats off properly.

Hazel Legg, nee Beier, was a 26-year-old mother-of-one from Ardingly when she was chosen in 1956.

She wrote to the Argus after seeing a nostalgic article on the Promettes in last month's Argus millennium supplement.

Hazel recalled how she was paid a guinea a day over three months during the summer, which just about covered the train fare from Ardingly.

The Promettes, chosen for their female charm, poise, personality and the ability to speak a foreign language, walked in pairs between the Palace and West piers.

Hazel, who could speak fluent German, did two years on the seafront as Chief Promette.

She appeared on What's My Line on TV and met panellists Bob Monkhouse, Barbara Kelly, Lady Isobelle Barnett and Alan Melville.

The Promettes were also invited to take part in the Wilfred Pickles show, Ask Pickles, filmed at Butlins in Saltdean.

Hazel, now a 70-year-old grandmother living in South suggested that the Promettes idea could perhaps be revived for the millennium.

The Promettes got chatted up regularly but Hazel had the perfect reply to date-hungry boys: "I'm married."

By the late Fifties, the Promettes were feted like movie stars wherever they went.

But by the early Sixties, tastes changed and they were axed in a cost-cutting exercise.

Hazel later went on to become a fashion model and also advertised products such as Steradent and Lucozade.

Hazel, who has a daughter, Karen, 49, and two grandchildren, Daniel, 24, and Karla, 20, keeps in touch with fellow Promette Marion Smith, who now lives in California.

She said: "Wouldn't it be nice to have a Promettes' reunion sometime?"

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