"Jackie puts judo hold on newsman"

NEW YORK (AP) -- A newspaper photographer says Jacqueline Onassis flipped him to the sidewalk with a judo hold after he took her picture outside the movie theatre showing "I Am Curious Yellow," the Swedish sex film.

Mel Finkelstein of the New York Daily News said Sunday night that Mrs. Onassis "grabbed my right wrist...put her leg out and flipped me over her thigh."

But the doorman of Cinema 57 Rendezvous on West 57th Street said Finkelstein slipped while taking a picture of the former Mrs. John F. Kennedy.

Neither Mrs. Onassis nor a family spokesman could be reached for comment.

Finkelstein and other photographers were waiting in the lobby of the theatre because the management had notified the news media that Mrs. Onassis and her husband, Aristotle, were viewing the film, after arriving in separate cars.

They spotted Mrs. Onassis walking through the lobby from her seat to the lounge and began taking pictures. Then they headed for the door.

Mrs. Onassis caught up with Finkelstein just outside the theatre. He shot another picture as she moved toward him.

"I thought she was going to say something," Finkelstein said. "I never figured she would do anything physical."

Finkelstein, 37, said he is 5-foot-10 and weights 168 pounds.

Mrs. Onassis, wearing a short leather skirt, dark stockings, a ribbed sweater and a multicolored scarf with zodiac signs over her head, stalked off after the incident.

An hour later, her husband emerged from the theatre, apparently unaware of the disturbance, and left with two men whom the theatre manager described as bodyguards.

[October 6th, 1969]