The charm of having her image on the label of a beer bottle appears to have worn off for a Coney Island snake charmer, who now alleges in a $250,000 lawsuit that she never authorized the brewer to immortalize her.

Stephanie Torres, aka “Serpentina,” helped promote the launch in June 2008 of Coney Island Albino Python, a white lager that is part of a new line of Shmaltz Brewing Co. beers inspired by the sideshow acts of Coney Island. As part of her act, she would drape herself in a 13-foot-long, 70-pound albino Burmese python named Orangina.

For the label on the Albino Python bottle, a tattoo artist drew a portrait of Torres, complete with the blond streak in her flowing black tresses and Orangina coiled around her arm. “She e-mailed pictures of herself to make the picture,” says Shmaltz founder Jeremy Cowan. “She knew about the project from Day One.”

But in a publicity rights suit filed earlier this month, Torres is seeking an injunction on future sales of any Shmaltz products bearing her image and at least $250,000 in damages, alleging she never gave her written consent to its commercial use.

The complaint suggests she had some sort of oral understanding with Shmaltz, according to which  it promised her “a to-be-negotiated sum of money in consideration for which plaintiff would allow her image to be placed on a beer to be created and sold by the defendant corporation. Defendant never issued any monies to the plaintiff despite her due demand.”

Torres also says that Shmaltz “has wrongfully and fraudulently advertised that plaintiff's image is distributed 'under a license agreement' or otherwise with her permission.”

Other Coney Island Craft Lagers feature sword swallower Heather Holliday and human blockhead Donny Vomit and Cowan says he has a licensing agreement with Coney Island USA, a non-profit which produces the Sideshows by the Seashore program at the famous Brooklyn, N.Y., amusement park and receives a portion of the proceeds from the beers.

“I know we have lived up to the terms of the agreement,” he tells On Point, adding that it is “very upsetting” to be sued over such a “wonderful project.”

Since the launch of the Albino Python beer, Orangina has died. But Torres has been training two Colombian red-tail boa constrictors and, to spice up her act, has been transforming herself into a snake by, among other things, having surgery to split her tongue.

“I won’t have to have the snakes with me, I will be the snake,” she told The Brooklyn Ink.

Torres' suit alludes to Shmaltz's application to register Albino Python as a trademark, saying it seeks “a further 'license' to permanently misappropriate plaintiff's image.” But the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office recently denied the application because the Albino Python mark is “confusingly similar” to that of the Python brand of beer and soft drinks.

By Matthew Heller
5/29/09