What Price Varga Girls?

A man 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."

In 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.

. You should live nobly. You and your wife should both have cars. . . . People associate you with Esquire."

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