Cheesecake Charter

In the Hollywood firmament, a starlet is a heavenly body twinkling only fleetingly on the screen but readily visible in publicity stills. Once in a while an ambitious starlet rebels against this fate. Three years ago Barbara Bates did just that. A wartime pin-up favorite while on the Universal lot, Barbara moved over to Warners', where she got her first speaking parts; her dramatic aspirations thus encouraged, she balked at posing for any more leg-art pictures.

Last week, still thinking about the case of Barbara, Universal-International struck a blow for art (hip, thigh & bosom division). The studio's legal experts fashioned a new clause to go into all starlet contracts: for the first five years of her term, the starlet must yield to the company's right to make "reproductions of her physical likeness, leaving it to the discretion of publicity and advertising directors to determine what is a reasonable degree of exposure of her pulchritudinous assets . . ." As a sample of its discretion under the new charter, the studio pictured the assets of the first signee, honey-blonde Starlet Peggie Castle, 21, of Appalachia, Va. A spokesman solemnly pledged that no U-I shutters would snap "if a girl doesn't have a figure that would do us any good--or do her any good either."

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