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The entrepreneurial Klaw, who died in 1966, hit on the idea of selling pictures of Hollywood stars while operating a movie bookstore. "He noticed that kids were tearing out the pictures of the movie stars, so he decided to sell their pictures rather than the books," Kramer said. Klaw started dealing directly with movie studios, RKO, Columbia and others, located in those days along Eleventh Avenue. "He made arrangements to buy from them whatever they didn't want ... original negatives, original prints of `Citizen Kane,' `Three Stooges,'" he said. The studios were more than happy to be rid of the stuff for which they had no room. Kramer's mother was the one who took the pin-up shots. But it was Klaw who launched that side of the business after a man approached him about making him a set of photographs of skimpily-clad girls posing with whips and ropes, said Kramer. Page was Klaw's favorite model, and a suitcase of the 7-inch heels she wore in the photos, plus other bondage props, will be included in the auction. The photos were tame by today's standards. In fact, the models were required to wear two pairs of underwear. But the FBI continuously harassed Klaw and he had to appear before the 1955 Senate Subcommittee on Obscene and Pornographic Materials. "It was a big headache," Kramer said. Klaw finally decided to burn all the pin-up material
-- but Paula Klaw saved a lot of it. ___ Online: Guernsey's: http://www.guernseys.com/
[Associated
Press;
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