The words "There she is, Miss America" may never be the same. Nor the punctiliously proper pageant itself, for that matter. Vanessa Williams, 21, electrified the contest and exhilarated many black women last September when she became the first of her race to win the title. Last week she became the first Miss America to be asked to resign. The request came after a meeting of the pageant board, hastily called in response to an announcement by Penthouse Publisher Bob Guccione, 53, that Williams will be featured in nude, extremely explicit love scenes with another woman on ten pages of the skin mag's September issue. According to the beauty queen's mother, Freelance Photographer Tom Chiapel took the black-and-white pictures two summers ago while Williams was working as a makeup artist and receptionist at a model agency. She reportedly signed a release and made little or no money from the photo session. Why the pictures surfaced now, just two months before the end of her reign, remained unexplained, but Guccione stated that Chiapel got "the most we ever paid for a layout." Williams had scant warning of the magazine's plan to publish. "She is shocked," said her lawyer, though he could hardly deny that it was she in the pictures. Williams will announce this week whether she will give up the crown. If she does, Suzette Charles, 21, the first runner-up, who is also black, is next in line for the title. For the next pageant, in September, the finalists from five states and the District of Columbia are black, the largest number ever.
"Mr. President, would you like to go skiing with me?" Truthfully, Italian President Sandro Pertini, 87, does not like skiing much. But the caller was an old and persuasive friend, Pope John Paul II, 64. So last week, by government jet and helicopter, the two were off for a brief ski trip and, said the Pope, "a little fresh air" on the slopes of the Adamello mountain range (which had been considerately cleared of other tourists). Sportily dressed in blue pants and windbreaker, sunglasses and red boots, John Paul made his first known ski outing since becoming Pope six years ago, though he skied regularly when he lived in Poland. A sweater-clad Pertini followed in a snowmobile, puffing on his pipe and crying, "Santitá [Holiness], you whirl about like a swallow." Stopping at a mountain lodge for a lunch of pasta, beef and wine, John Paul toasted "a true friendship and an authentic human sentiment." Pertini then headed back to Rome, but the Pope stayed on the slopes for another day of enthusiastic downhilling. Reported Alpine Guide Franco Zani: "He skied at a level you could call intermediate—calm, slowly, turning well." Most important, Zani noted, "he did not fall."
He is the apple of his glowing mother's eye, but Nastassja Kinski's black-haired baby has the looks of the actress's Egyptian lover, Ibrahim Moussa, 37. Delivered by caesarean section in a Rome clinic three weeks ago, Aljosha Nakzynski will soon travel with his mother to join Moussa in Monte Carlo, where the talent agent and film producer has just switched careers and is learning the ropes as an international representative for the Bulgari jewelry company.