Margie Moran recalls her friendship with Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali when they met back in 1973. Handout and Biography.com

MANILA — Former beauty queen Margie Moran once turned down an offer to pose for the renowned Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali. 

"He wanted to paint me — as a woman, all in white, coming out of a wall," she said in an interview this week with the Philippine Star. 

In the same interview, she also talked of her plans as the new chairperson of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. 

According to Moran, she met Dali, perhaps best known to casual art fans for his painting of melting watches and his striking moustache, in 1973. She had just won Miss Universe and was staying in New York City. 

She remembered that it was Dali who was the one who first approached her, and that she accepted plenty of dinner invites from him and his wife. Though she did say no when he offered to paint her as a ghost, this remains her biggest regret of her life. 

"I was 19. What did I know?" she admitted. 

They met at the St. Regis Hotel, where Dali was said to have had a suite. She said that she and Dali also watched a young Tony Bennett perform at the hotel's lounge before he became famous. 

Dali died in 1989, seven years after his wife. 

A photo of Salvador Dali's famous painting, The Persistence of Memory. Wikimedia Commons

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