| | Bettie Page with her hot fetish
modeling carrier in the 50s, has become an icon in pinup history and an important
figure in the history of free sexual expression. Some say she initiated the general
public into the next generation sex movement, being the first famous model to
popularize fetish, bondage and bdsm. The interest into the life and work
of Bettie Page is still alive, now with the film "The Notorious Bettie Page",
it is based on the story of Bettie Page from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s,
directed by Mary Harron and starring Gretchen Mol as the adult Bettie. The movie
opened in theaters april 14 in 2006. Who is Bettie
Page and how did she become a star? | |
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Bettie Mae Page was born April 22, 1923. She grew up, poor, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Her mother didn't want her, she did not want girls, and her father molested her,
she was an exceptional student. After graduating, she enrolled at Peabody College,
with the goal of learning to be a teacher. At the same time Bettie began to learn
dramatic arts, with the hope of becoming a movie star. She also found her first
job, typing the manuscripts of author Alfred Leland Crabb. Bettie graduated from
Peabody with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1943. How
did Betty Page get into modeling?
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. Prior to 1950, Bettie
had done a small amount of local modeling and stage acting. But in October of
that year she met Jerry Tibbs, a policeman and photography hobbyist, on a beach
at Coney Island. He offered to take pictures for her portfolio at his studio.
Tibbs also suggested her trademark hairstyle bangs. Bettie's career grew from
there, she posed for camera clubs, sometimes in the nude. Bettie was strikingly
sultry and had an amazing connection with the camera lens. She had an explosive
combination of features, nice and naughty, shy and daring, simple and exotic.
In 1951 her image begins to apear on the cover of men's magazines with names like
Eyeful, Wink, Titter, Black Nylons and Beauty Parade. | | 1955
"Playmate of the Month" and "Miss Pinup Girl of the World"
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
pinup 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. The
leopard skin patterned "Jungle Girl" outfit she wore for the shoot was
made by Bettie herself. She made periodic trips to Florida to pose for Bunny Yeager
and other pinup photographers, leading to many of her beach shots. 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, apearing nude except for a Santa hat. That beautiful
smile "suggested forbidden fruit as well as apple pie," said PLAYBOY.
Bettie's pictures made a number of subsequent appearances in Playboy, and Hugh
Hefner has said that Bettie is one of his favorite Playmates of all time, "she
had a saucy innocence that is both contemporary and provocative, and also nostalgic".
Hugh Hefner says Bettie's appearance in PLAYBOY was a milestone, and that
"she became, in time, an American icon, her winning smile and effervescent
personality apparent in every pose. A kinky connection was added by Irving Klaw's
spanking, fetish and bondage photos, which became part of the Bettie Page mystique;
they were playful parodies that are now perceived as the early inspiration for
Madonna's excursions into the realm of sexual perversion." This same year,
1955, she won the title "Miss Pinup Girl of the World" and was nicknamed
the "Girl with the Perfect Figure." Bettie Page became a more sultry
alternative to other 1950s sex idols like Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. |
| 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. Her popularity had a resurgence in the late '70s and has been
on the rise ever since. She was tracked down in the early '90s; in the late '90s
two books appeared about her: an authorized biography by Karen Essex and James
L. Swanson, Bettie Page: The Life of a Pinup Legend, and an unauthorized biography
by Richard Foster, The Real Bettie Page, which paints an uglier picture. Many
modern-day Bettie-inspired models such as Bernie Dexter, Dita Von Teese, and Nina
Elizabeth Page are revered for their classic beauty and resemblance to Bettie
Page. Betties fame has risen in popularity through the years. Throughout
her modeling carrier though, Bettie herself did not feel famous and she did not
get any royalties for the photos, all she got was her initial modeling fee, which
was $10 an hour. Betties movies and pictures still sell today, more than 50 years
after she ended her carrier. All kinds of memorabilia, posters and books have
been made about her. Now she is in the public light again with the film "The
Notorious Bettie Page". The Notorious Bettie
Page - the movie
A biographical movie, The Notorious Bettie Page,
was released in 2005, and shown in theaters since april 14 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. Visit
the Notorious Bettie Page - the movie Bettie is now in good health and
lives a simple, private life somewhere in California, where she enjoys movies,
sewing, and gardening. Her goal is to be still active at age 100. In the last
several years, she has finally received some of the financial rewards of her new-found
popularity. Though she is a Christian, Bettie has never felt it was wrong
to pose in the nude, she has stated that she really enjoyed her modeling carrier,
including the fetish and the bondage for Irving Klaw. Bettie has said "Being
in the nude isn't a disgrace unless you're being promiscuous about it. After all,
when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden,
God was probably naked as a jaybird too!". Many of the original films
and pictures of Bettie Page where destroyed by Klaw when he left the bondage business,
the surviving films are the rarest of the rare and sometimes the quality is not
very good. Many of Page's short films have been reissued on DVD. "The
classic films of Irving Klaw - Betty Page #1 and #2", with at total runtime
of 120 minutes, is a collection of movies, a whole compendium of fetish practices
that at the time were labeled obscene and ran into legal trouble. "Bettie
Page in Bondage" five short movies starring Betty Page, runtime: 30 minutes.
There is also a DVD documentary about her Bettie
Page Uncovered, containing 30 minutes of rare and previously unreleased material.
These can be purchased through LeggyVideos.com In
her authorized biography "Page Bettie Page: The Life of a Pinup Legend",
she writes in the book's foreword, "Please remember me as I was. I hope that
you understand. I am content now. I enjoy my privacy and my simple life. I have
no regrets." | |
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