Beauty & the Boss

Lives there a boss who would fire a nubile, decorative (36-23-36) female assistant simply because she so resembles Cinemorsel Kim Novak that it is downright distracting? Answer: Yes. Pan

American World Airways discharged Manhattan Ticket Clerk Joan March, 20 (real name: Marchesani), because she looked too provocative.

When Joan was hired last January, a tropical spell hit Pan Am's Fifth Avenue office. It was those fuselage-hugging sheath dresses she wore. Those doe eyes. That platinum blonde hair. And all that Hollywood mascara. "Tone down your appearance," warned Pan Am. So Joan toned down the mascara and eye shadow, sacked her sheaths in favor of a white blouse and black skirt. But she drew the line at a suggestion to switch her hair color to a more businesslike strawberry blonde.

That was too much for Reservation Manager John Macomber. On April 30 he "verbally" fired Joan--not knowing that she had completed her 90-day probation period just the day before, and thus could not be given the air without formal charges. Joan's union (the Air Transport Division of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks) raised such a howl that Pan Am reinstated her. Last week Joan was back in the news as a pretty pawn in collective bargaining.

Since she was reinstated, charged the union, Joan has been working "in a closet in the back of the office, where she doesn't like it." Before it agrees to a new contract, the union wants Pan Am to admit that it was wrong, and to move Joan out front.

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