Bettie Page

At 85 years old, Bettie Page has this physical status:

Betty Mae Page (April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008), also known as Bettye Page, was an American model who made a name for herself in the 1950s for her pin-up pictures.

Artists have been influenced by her shoulder-length jet-black hair, blue eyes, and trademark bangs for decades, despite being often referred to as the "Queen of Pinups." Page, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, spent her early teens in California before heading to New York City to pursue acting as an actor.

She began working as a pin-up model and photographed hundreds of photographers in the 1950s.

"Miss January 1955," one of the month's top Playmates for Playboy magazine, was on display.

"I think she was a remarkable woman, a symbol of pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, and a person who left a lasting impression on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner wrote to the Associated Press in 1989, "I think she was a hero, a figure in pop culture who inspired sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a major influence on our culture."

Depression, violent mood swings, and several years in a state psychiatric hospital suffering from paranoid schizophrenia marked Page's life.

She saw a revival of fame in the 1980s after years of secrecy.

Early life

Betty Mae Page, who began spelling her first name "Bettie," was born in 1923 in Nashville, Tennessee, the second of six children to Walter Roy Page (1896–1964) and Edna Mae Pirtle (1901-1996). The Page family travelled around the country in search of economic stability during her early years. She had to face the challenges of caring for her younger children at an early age, particularly after her father was found guilty of car theft and two years in a Atlanta, Georgia jail.

When Page was ten years old, her parents divorced and her mother worked two jobs, one as a hairdresser (during the day) and the other as a washer (at night). Edna placed Page, a 10-year-old mother, and her two siblings in a Protestant orphanage for a year, who were unable to care for all her children. Their father remained in the area, at one point renting a basement room from the cash-strapped Edna. When she was 13 years old, Page said he began sexually assaulting her.

As a youth, Page and her siblings tried new makeup and hairdos imitating their favorite movie stars. She also learned to sew. When Page did her own makeup and hair and created her own bikinis and costumes, her abilities were still useful for her pin-up photography years later.

"Girl Most Likely to Succeed" was a popular student and debate team member at Hume-Fogg High School. Page graduated as the salutatorian of her high school class with a scholarship on June 6, 1940. She enrolled at George Peabody College (later part of Vanderbilt University) with the intention of becoming a teacher. However, she began studying acting in the hopes of becoming a film actress next fall. She began typing for author Alfred Leland Crabb while simultaneously writing for her first job. In 1944, Page graduated from Peabody with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Page had met William E. "Billy" Neal, a former high school sports celebrity who was two years older than her classmates just short of graduating from Hume-Fogg High, just shy of graduating from Hume-Fogg High. He was drafted into the Army for World War II in September 1942, and he and Page married on February 18, 1943, before he was shipped out. She went from San Francisco to Miami and then to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she felt a deep connection with the people and the culture of the region. In 1947, Neal and Sheil divorced.

Source

Modeling career

Page immigrated to New York City in late 1947, where she hoped to find work as an actress. She helped herself by working at the American Bread Company, near Penn Station, in a little known profession. She was convicted of a sexual assault by a group of guys and retreated to Nashville, where she briefly worked for the L & N Railroad in Nashville. She returned to New York within weeks, as the secretary to a real estate developer and an insurance broker who shared offices in the Eastern Airlines Building in Rockefeller Plaza.

Bettie encountered NYPD Officer Jerry Tibbs, who was an avid photographer, on the Coney Island shore in 1950, and he gave Bettie his card. He said she'd be a good pin-up model. He will assist in the creation of her first pin-up portfolio free of charge in exchange for allowing him to photograph her. Tibbs suggested to Bettie that her hair be styled with bangs in front to avoid showing off her high forehead when being photographed. Bangs were soon to be a key component of her distinctive appearance.

"camera clubs" were established in late-1940s America to avoid laws restricting the production of nude images. These camera clubs were ostensibly designed to promote artistic photography, but in reality, most of them were simply fronts for pornography making. Pages first ventured into "glamour photography" as a popular camera club model, first with photographer Cass Carr. Her lack of inhibition in posing made her a hit, and her name and image became instantly known in the narcotic photography market. Bettie's image appeared in men's magazines such as Wink, Titter, Eyefull, and Beauty Parade in 1951.

She posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with pin-up and BDSM themes from late 1951 to 1957, making her the first well-known bondage model. Klaw also used Page in hundreds of short, black-and-white 8mm and 16mm "specialty" films that responded to specific customer needs. Women were dressed in lingerie and high heels, playing out fetishistic scenarios of capture, domination, and slave-training; bondage, spanking, and elaborate leather costumes and restraints were all included in these silent one-reel featurettes. The page alternated between playing a stern dominatrix and a helpless victim tied hand and foot.

During these sessions, Klaw also produced a series of still photos. Some of his best-selling photos from the film Leopard Bikini Bound include images such as his most popular photo of Page, showing gagged and tied in a web of ropes. Although these "underground" films had the same crude style and clandestine distribution as the pornographic "stag" films of the time, Klaw's all-female films (and still photos) never contained any nudity or explicit sexual content. Page reflected retrospectively on the bondage photos and her celebrity.

Page began teaching acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio in 1953, which culminated in numerous appearances on stage and television. She appeared on The United States Steel Hour and The Jackie Gleason Exhibition. Time is a thief and a Sunday Costs Five Pesos were among her Off-Broadway productions. In the feature-length burlesque revue film Striporama directed by Jerald Intrator, in which she was briefly given a brief speaking role, Page performed and danced. She appeared in two more burlesque films by Irving Klaw (Teaserama and Varietease). These exotic dance routines and vignettes by Page and well-known striptease artists Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm are among Page's featured exotic dance routines and vignettes. Both three films were mildly risqué, but no one showed any nudity or overtly sexual content.

Page met photographers Jan Caldwell, H. W. Hannau, and Bunny Yeager during one of her annual vacations to Miami, Florida. Page was the top pin-up model in New York at the time. Yeager, a former model and young photographer, in Boca Raton, Florida, signed Page for a photo shoot at Africa USA's now-closed wildlife park Africa USA. One of her best-known shots from this shoot are "Jungle Bettie" photos. They include nude shots with a pair of cheetahs named Mojah and Mbili. Page herself made the leopard-skin-patterned jungle girl outfit she wore, as well as a lot of her lingerie. In the book Bettie Page Confidential, a collection of the Yeager photos, as well as Klaw's, was published. (St. Martin's Press, 1994).

In the January 1955 issue of the two-year-old magazine, Yeager sent photos of Page to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, choosing one to use as the Month centerfold. The famous picture shows Page, wearing only a Santa hat, kneeling behind a Christmas tree holding an ornament, and playfully winking at the camera. Page received the award "Miss Pinup Girl of the World" in 1955. She has also been known as "The Queen of Curves" and "The Dark Angel." Although pin-up and glamour models have careers that can be measured in months, Page has been modeling for several years, beginning to model until 1957.

Although she often performed nude, she never appeared in scenes with explicit sexual content. In 1957, Page gave the FBI "expert advice" on the production of "flagellation and bondage photographs" in Harlem.

The reasons for Page's departure from modeling differ. According to several reports, a young man died during a session of bondage ostensibly inspired by images featuring Page. While living in Key West, Florida, Page converted to Christianity and became a born again evangelist on December 31, 1959. "I began to believe he disapproved of all those nude pictures of me," she recalled in 1998.

Sam Menning was the last person to photograph a pin-up of Page before her retirement.

Page attended a service at the Key West Temple Baptist Church on New Year's Eve 1958, on one of her regular visits to Key West. She found herself drawn to a multiracial environment and started attending on a daily basis. She will attend three bible colleges, including the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon, and, for a brief period, a Christian retreat called "Bibletown" at Boca Raton Community Church in Boca Raton, Florida.

Richard Arbib, a British industrial designer, died in the 1950s and then married Armond Walterson on November 6, 1958; the couple separated on October 10, 1963.

She attempted to become a Christian missionary in Africa in the 1960s, but was refused because she had had a divorce. She served with various Christian organisations over the next few years before settling in Nashville in 1963 and re-enrolled at Peabody College to pursue a master's degree in education, but she was eventually dissatisfied. Rev. Margaret Thatcher served full-time for Rev. Billy Graham. Billy Neal, her first husband, remarried briefly in late 1963 or 1964, but the marriage was soon ended.

She returned to Florida in 1966 and married again, to Harry Lear on February 14, 1966, but the union ended in divorce on January 18, 1972.

In October 1978, she moved to Southern California. She had a nervous breakdown and had an altercation with her landlady. She was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia by the doctors who examined her, and she spent 20 months in Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, California. Following a dispute with another landlord, she was arrested for assault but not guilty due to insanity and under state supervision for eight years. She was born in 1992.

Source