Bettie Page

Bettie Mae Page (born April 22, 1923), more commonly known as Bettie Page, was an American model and pin-up girl, active mostly in the 1950s. She is said to have been photographed more than Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford combined.

In addition to common pin-up photos, Page also posed for a number of fetish photos, which earned her a cult following even beyond fetish culture.

Early life

Born in Kingsport, Tennessee to Walter Roy Page and Enda Mae Pirtle. Ms. Page's parents divorced when she was 10 years old, forcing her and her sister to live for a year at an orphanage. A strong student and debate team member in high school, she reportedly missed earning the title of school valedictorian and a scholarship to Vanderbilt University by a quarter of a grade point.

On June 6, 1940, Bettie graduated, honored with a trust fund of $100, and she enrolled at Peabody College, with the goal of learning to be a teacher. The next fall, Bettie began to learn dramatic arts, with the faint hope of becoming a movie star. She also found her first job, typing the manuscripts of author Alfred Leland Crabb. Page graduated from Peabody with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1943. She married Billy Neal, who had attended high school with her, who shortly afterwards left her for active duty in World War II, and whom she divorced in 1947.

Her modeling career

After working briefly in Haiti as a secretary at a furniture company, she moved to New York City, where she supported herself as a secretary while looking for work as an actress. While she appeared in a couple of Off-Broadway plays in 1956, Page found her fame and success in modeling, first for camera clubs, then later for commercial redistribution. She learned of this line of work through a chance encounter in 1950 with Jerry Tibbs on a deserted beach at Coney Island. Tibbs also suggested her trademark bangs (fringe).

At first Page posed for camera clubs, sometimes in the nude, because the photographs were not to be published. In 1951 her image appeared on the cover of men's magazines with names like Eyeful, Wink, Titter, Black Nylons, or Beauty Parade. At the same time she posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with a bondage or sado-masochistic theme, making her the first famous bondage model.

During one of the annual pilgrimages to the sun, sand and surf she adored, Bettie Page met Bunny Yeager in Miami, Florida in 1954. At that time Page was the top pin-up model in New York, and Yeager an aspiring photographer. Bunny signed Page for a photo session at the now closed African wildlife park Africa USA in Boca Raton, Florida. The “Jungle Bettie” photographs from this shoot are some of her most celebrated and include nude shots with a pair of cheetahs who were named Mojah and Mbili. The leopard skin patterned “Jungle Girl” outfit she wore for the shoot was made by Bettie herself.

After Bunny Yeager sent shots of Bettie Page to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, she was featured as Playmate of the Month and centerfold for Playboy magazine in its January 1955 issue. Bettie also became one of Hefner's obsessions. When Page was almost forced to file for bankruptcy, it was Hefner who bailed her out.

In an industry where the average career of a model was measured in months, Page was in demand for several years, modelling until 1957. Although she frequently posed in the nude, she never appeared in any scenes with explicit sexual content. When Howard Hughes, movie maker and billionaire, sent her a letter asking to meet her, she declined.

The reported reasons for her departure from modelling work are varied. Some authorities state she was burnt out and her marriage to Armand Walterson in 1958 was the cause. Others mention the “Kefauver Hearings” of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which ended Irving Klaw's mail-order photography business. In any case, shortly after her marriage to Walterson, she had a religious conversion in December 31, 1958, and severed all contact with the prior life. For many years, the last known facts of her life was her divorce from Walterson in the early 1960s, and that she was working as a secretary for a Christian organization.

The Bettie Page revival

The Playboy model Barbi Benton revived interest in Page as some considered the younger woman to be in her image. Then in 1978, Belier Press began to reprint some of the pictures from the private camera club sessions, which reintroduced Page to a new generation. Within a few years, Page became an icon of the 1950s, her renewed fame rivalling Marilyn Monroe's.

In the early 1980s, comic book talent Dave Stevens based the female love interest of his hero Cliff Secord, alias "The Rocketeer", on Page. A fanzine was started called The Betty Pages and recounted tales of the camera club days. When Bettie asked the fan club to stop, it did.

Dark Horse Comics published a comic based on her fictional adventures in the 1990s after Jim Silke did a large format comic featuring her likeness. Eros Comics also published several Bettie Page titles, the most popular being the tongue-in-cheek Tor Love Bettie which suggested a romance between Page and wrestler-turned-Ed Wood film actor, Tor Johnson.

Many modern-day Bettie-inspired models such as Bernie Dexter, Dita Von Teese, and Nina Elizabeth Page (no relation) are revered for their classic beauty and resemblance to Bettie Page.

A biographical movie, The Notorious Bettie Page, was released in 2005, and showed in theaters in 2006. It is based on the story of Bettie Page from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, and stars Gretchen Mol as the adult Bettie.

Many of Page's short films have been reissued to DVD, as have her appearances in films such as Teaserama. Recent made-for-DVD documentaries about her include Bettie Page Uncovered and The Girl in the Leopard Print Bikini.

The years out of the spotlight

This renewed attention raised the inevitable question: what had happened to Bettie Page since the late 1950s? The 1990's edition of the popular Book of Lists included Page in a list of once-famous celebrities who had seemingly vanished from the public eye.

This question was answered in part with the publication of an official biography in 1996, Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-up Legend. Her biography described a woman who dealt head-on with adversity, always looking forward, never looking back. It told how she had remarried her first husband briefly, in order to satisfy requirements so she could become a missionary; neither the remarriage nor her missionary work was a success. She married a third time in 1967 to a man named Harry Lear in Florida, divorcing him in 1972. At the time of the rebirth of her celebrity, Page was living penniless in California, unaware of her renewed celebrity. She hoped that with the efforts of her co-author and agent, James Swanson, she would be seeing some financial reward for this renewed attention.

A second biography, written by Richard Foster and published in 1997, The Real Bettie Page: The Truth about the Queen of Pinups, tells a less happy tale. It details numerous accounts of violence on her part against not only her third husband and her two step-children, but also against other people, in addition to several stays in mental institutions, the last one from 1983 to 1992 at Patton State Hospital in Highland, California. It also furnished information that Page had still not received all of the money due to her since her rediscovery.

Foster's book immediately provoked attacks from her fans, including Hefner and Harlan Ellison, as well as a statement from Page that it is “full of lies”. However, Steve Brewster, founder of the Bettie Scouts of America fan club, has stated that it is not as unsympathetic as the book's reputation makes it to be. Brewster adds that he also read the chapter about her business dealings with Swanson, and stated that Page was pleased with that part of her story.

In a late-1990s interview, Page stated she would not allow any current pictures of her to be shown because of concerns about her weight. In 2003, however, she changed her mind and allowed a publicity picture to be taken of her for the August 2003 edition of Playboy; it can be found here ^*. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times ran an article headlined “A Golden Age for a Pinup” ^*, covering an autographing session at her current publicity company, CMG Worldwide. Once again, she declines to be photographed, saying that she would rather be remembered as she was. She was also named to the Polly Staffle Hall of Fame.

Films

2004 - Dark Angel
2006 - The Notorious Bettie Page

Trivia

The third track on Paul Spencer's debut album, The Whole Shebang is entitled "Bettie Page". The song includes the lyric "Locks the world in a cage, she's kinky like Bettie Page", paying tribute to Page's notorious risque photographs.

References and further reading

Essex, Karen, and James L. Swanson. Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1996. ISBN 1881649628.
Foster, Richard. The Real Bettie Page: The Truth About the Queen of the Pinups. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group/Birch Lane Press, 1997. ISBN 1559724323.

External links

Listening

Interview with The Notorious Bettie Page director Mary Harron from Fresh Air program, April 12, 2006

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