Word: vargas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Esquire magazine hasn't had a girl it could call its own since a judge gave the Varga girl back to aggrieved Artist Alberto Vargas (TIME, May 13). Vargas said he had been outsmarted in the fine print of his contract with Esquire's Publisher David Smart. Last week at a Hollywood cocktail party, Publisher Smart unveiled the Varga Girl's successor. The new deal was not one girl but a gallery full, drawn not by one artist but by 17 of them...
...with a head full of Varga girls might not have much time for reading contracts. Peru-born Alberto Vargas, slight, black-mustached creator of Esquire's pin-up girls, claims that he signed his without reading it. He further claims that his trusted employer said, "This is one contract you can sign with your eyes closed...
According to Artist Vargas, he thought the deal was $18,000 annually for 26 Varga girls a year. The contract actually called for one Varga girl a week for ten years, at $12,000 a year. That was a "physical impossibility," said Vargas-the girls must first be born in the mind, "then they have to come from my heart and out through my hand...
...Chicago's Federal Court last week, moist-eyed Alberto Vargas asked a judge to set aside his unwitting agreement with Esquire's president, David Smart, and claimed $250,000 in damages, $200,000 of it for Esquire's use of an unsigned Varga girl. Vargas also hinted at something closely resembling mental cruelty. "Uncle Dave" Smart, he said, had urged him to live in a style that would "exude success...
...dodging the question whether leg-art is really art, decided 8-0 that it was none of the Post Office Department's business either. The court restored Esquire's second-class mailing rights, which Post Office censors took away because they disapproved of Esquire's undressed Varga girls. It was a clear victory for Esquire, worth $500,000 a year in postage, and scads more in free publicity...