HarlemRod72

Vanessa Williams became the first Black Miss America at 20.. Penthouse got nude photos she says she never signed a release for.. and the issue reportedly brought in about $14 million while she got nothing. She gave up the crown at 21, weeks before her year was up. "And of course Penthouse made a slew of money on all of it," she says. She was Miss New York, a college junior, when she won in Atlantic City. The runner-up, Miss New Jersey, was also Black. How it fell apart, in her words: a photographer shot the pictures when she was a teenager, and they were sold behind her back once she was famous. The court record: The previous September, she was crowned Miss America 1984. Throughout her reign, death threats came by mail to her parents' house. Their number was listed in the phone book. In July 1984, she resigned the title. Suzette Charles, the runner-up, finished the year. September 1984: the Penthouse issue hit newsstands. $14 million: what that issue reportedly made. Her share: $0. 1984: she filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and photographer Tom Chiapel. "I didn't have a career," she says of that moment. The case for Vanessa: "There is no signed release. They shouldn't have been seen by anybody anyway." The case for Penthouse: she did pose for the photos, and the most famous young woman in America was news. Guccione printed them while the story was at its peak. Then the twist. Penthouse wasn't the only side doing the math. The pageant ran on corporate sponsors, she says, naming American Greetings, Clairol and Gillette. Keeping her meant risking those dollars. In the video below, Vanessa Williams says: "It always comes out to money. How can I make the biggest bang?" Was the pageant protecting its image, or protecting its sponsors' checks?