Young Internet mavericks should remember... this was 40 years ago, long before Photoshop.
Anyone doing print layout work got very good at using a razor blade to quite literally slice a desired image out of its background in the source photograph. You physically remove the piece you want, and throw away the rest of the print.
Look at old magazines or movie posters and you can see how the lines around someone's hair are too smooth and clean -- due to the action of the razor blade. It took a great hand to make those curves come out so natural-looking:
Therefore, such a 'cutout' technique would be one of several quick-and-dirty methods of editing anomalies out of a photograph. Here's how:
Print three extra photographs off of the offending negative. Stack them perfectly on top of each other and tape them down to your desktop. Find a black strip next to the area you need to get rid of, so the colors match as precisely as possible, and slice it out.
Now you have freed up three equal black strips, from each of the three photographs in your stack.
Go back to the original and paste your strips in over the image, just where you need them. Eyeball it to make sure no one will ever be able to tell.
Look closely. White lines start at the top left of the next image and continue appearing all the way down to the bottom right. Whatever we're covering up here, it's BIG.
Looks good. Done!