Nudity & Discretion

On editors' desks throughout the land last week appeared newspictures of a naked girl. In most newspaper offices photographs of nudes excite little comment, less interest. Darkroom walls are plastered with them, casual trophies of forgotten assignments involving glib cameramen and willing females. Picture files bulge with unprintable prints of nudist colonists, of cheap bathing beauties and third-rate entertainers in the all-together. But last week's exhibit widened many an editor's eye, caused many a hard-boiled newshawk to whistle with surprise. The girl was pretty, shapely, and, most extraordinarily, a private citizen with nothing to gain by undressing for the Press. She was Kaletta Justine Mulvihill, 16, daughter of a respectable and fairly well-to-do Pittsburgh family. She got into the news by eloping with a truck driver, kept herself there by a series of rattle brained statements as to what she proposed to do about it.

Because Kaletta's father is Thomas J. Mulvihill, minor sales official of Gulf Oil Co., the Press promptly decided to call her an "oil heiress." Her mother, divorced from her father, lives in Manila. While there Kaletta became attached to Sidrian ("Sid") Paredes, handsome, athletic son of Speaker Quintin Paredes of the Philippine Legislature. Few months ago she arrived in the U. S. for her father's semi annual share of her company. From Pittsburgh she went to Grove City, Pa. to visit a girl friend. The friend took her to a party. There Kaletta met one Thomas Green, brawny driver of a coal truck. Few weeks later Kaletta and Thomas roused a sleepy Methodist minister who, clad in pajamas, made them man & wife. Kaletta gave her name as Justine Paredes, her age as 22. For the ceremony she also used a ring "Sid" Paredes had given her.

For a week the Greens kept themselves in headlines. Kaletta would have the marriage annulled. Kaletta would not. Kaletta loved only "Sid" Paredes and would marry him in a double ceremony involving her mother and "Sid's" father. At this point Father Parades asked Kaletta. through the public prints, please to refrain from spreading ''imaginary stories.'' Mother Mulvihill addressed a public message from Manila to "Dear Tommy," suggesting either an annulment or a honeymoon in the Philippines, offering to pay the steamship fares across the Pacific. Replying to "Dear Mother," cautious Bridegroom Green preferred the honeymoon, provided someone would buy him a return ticket to Pittsburgh in case the marriage should fail. Father Mulvihill broke a dignified silence to observe that the marriage was doubtless void anyway because his daughter had falsified her name and age.

On the fourth day of Kaletta Mulvihill Green's married life, Photographer Arthur Chapman of Hearst's Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph met her at a swimming hole near Grove City. Pa. where she "sought surcease and escape from the spotlight of publicity." By way of escape, Kaletta removed her bathing suit, assumed three fetching poses for Photographer Chapman. First she stood breast-deep in the water, arms outstretched. Then she lay on her stomach on the bank, her feet swung high over her back. Finally she took up a high-&-dry posture on a rock with her left side toward the camera. From the Sun-Telegraph, the pictures went to Hearst's International News Photos, thence to the trade, each print plainly marked: EDITORS NOTE--PHOTOS SENT FOR USE AT YOUR DISCRETION.

Editorial discretion on the nudity of a private citizen took different forms. Some editors, perhaps mindful that Photographer Chapman was jeopardized by Pennsylvania's strict laws against contributing to the delinquency of a minor, tossed the prints aside. In Pittsburgh the Sun-Telegraph printed the swimming pose. So did the New York Daily News and the Omaha Bee-News. Hearst's New York American delicately restored Kaletta's bathing suit before publication. At least one newspaper dared to print Kaletta naked on the rock. It was the Knoxville Journal.

On the Knoxville Journal's front page of the same day was splashed a six- column close-up picture of the bare, bloody torso of a dead gunman, punctured by 23 police bullets. Such journalistic antics were unknown on the sedate Journal while Luke Lea owned it. But with onetime Publisher Lea in a North Carolina prison, the newspaper's control has been vested in the remote, impersonal hands of New Orleans' Canal Bank & Trust Co. and the present titular owner, Nat G. Taylor, son of Tennessee's late Governor. Meanwhile the editorial staff has delighted in doing as it pleases. City Editor Minis Thomason not only wrote and signed the lead story of the killing of the gunman, but proudly printed his own picture with it.

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