In Brazil, the beauty pageants' mania was ending, and this would be last year that the 'Miss Brazil' competition was held at the 11,800-seating capacity Maracanãzinho indoor arena, in Rio de Janeiro (June 24th). The winner, Rejane Goulart, would become '1st Runner-up' at the Miss Universe 1972 (1972) and the first runner-up, Miss São Paulo, Ângela Maria Favi, represented the country in this pageant without placing in the finals.
Approximately 23.75 million viewers watched this program through BBC-1, becoming one of the most watched shows on British TV. The contest was also broadcast to parts of Europe, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand.
On November 29 it was reported that the outgoing Miss World, Brazilian Lúcia Petterle, would not arrive in London to crown her successor because of a fractured arm after a fall while recording a television program two months earlier. Julia Morley, the pageant's Director, performed this tradition instead.
As the previous year, there were two entries from South Africa, one black, Cynthia Shange (as Miss Africa South), and one white, Stephanie Elizabeth Reinecke (as Miss South Africa).
This was the first year that the slogan "Beauty with a Purpose" was used for the Pageant. Since the 1950s, Eric Morley, the pageant's creator, had already begun to donate the proceeds of the contest to charitable causes and this increased in the 1960s when he joined forces with the Variety Club of Great Britain to contribute to children's charities.
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