Bettie Page

Bettie Page Biography

Birth Name(s) : Bettie Mae Page
Date of Birth: April 22, 1923

Page was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the second child of Walter Roy Page and Edna Mae Pirtle. During Bettie's early years, the Page family traveled around the country in search of economic stability. At a tender age, Bettie had to face the responsibilities of caring for her younger siblings. Her parents divorced when Betty was 10 years old. Following the divorce, Page and her sister lived in an orphanage for a year. During this time, Bettie's mother worked two jobs, one as a hairdresser during the day and washed laundry at night. As a teenager, Bettie and her sisters tried different makeup styles and hairdos imitating their favorite movie stars. Bettie also learned to sew. These skills proved useful years later for herpin-up photography when Bettie did her own makeup and hair and made her own bikinis and costumes. A strong student and debate team member at Hume-Fogg High School, Bettie was voted "Most Likely to Succeed."

Following her divorce, Page worked briefly in San Francisco, and in Haiti. She moved to New York City, where she intended to find work as an actress. In the meantime, she supported herself working as a secretary. In 1950, while walking along the Coney Island, New York City shore, Bettie met Jerry Tibbs, a police officer with an interest in photography. Bettie was a willing model, and Tibbs took pictures of Bettie and put together her first pinup portfolio.

After Bunny Yeager sent shots of Bettie to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Hefner featured Page as the January 1955 Playmate of the Month, the centerfold model for the two-year-old Playboy magazine. In 1955, Bettie won the title "Miss Pinup Girl of the World."

While pin up and glamour models frequently have careers measured in months, Page was in demand for several years, continuing to model until 1957. Although she frequently posed in the nude, she never appeared in scenes with explicit sexual content. The reasons reported for her departure frompin-up , glamour, and fetish modeling vary. Some reports mention the Kefauver Hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which ended Irving Klaw's bondage and S&M mail-order photography business. In fact, the United States Congress called her to testify to explain the photos in which she appeared. While she was excused from appearing before the committee, the print negatives of many of her photos were destroyed by court order. For many years after, the negatives that survived were illegal to print.

Shortly after, Page signed with Chicago-based agent James Swanson. Three years later, nearly penniless and failing to receive any royalties, Page fired Swanson and signed with Curtis Management Group, a company which also represented the James Dean and Marilyn Monroe estates. She then began collecting payments which ensured her financial security.

In 1997, E!: Entertainment Television's E! True Hollywood Story aired a feature on Page entitled, Bettie Page: From Pinup to Sex Queen.

Some of Page's short films have been reissued on DVD, such as Bettie Page: Varietease/Teaserama as well as a collection of five shorts called Betty Page In Bondage.

In 2006, Bettie Page and Halo Guitars collaborated to produce a limited edition of custom guitars, released at the 2007 Winter NAMM show in southern California. The total run of one hundred guitars were hand-made by luthier Waylon Ford, painted by the artist Pamelina H., and signed byBettie Page.

The question of what Page did in the obscure years after modeling 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.

Another biography, The Real Bettie Page: The Truth about the Queen of Pinups written by Richard Foster and published in 1997, told a less happy tale. Foster's book immediately provoked attacks from her fans, including Hefner and Harlan Ellison, as well as a statement from Page that it was “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.

Within the last few years, she has hired a law firm to help her recoup some of the profits being made with her likeness.

In 2003, Page was photographed with Hugh Hefner at a party celebrating Playboy Magazine's 50th Anniversary. Four years later, she attended the Miami Film Festival premiere of her bio-pic The NotoriousBettie Page (in which Gretchen Mol played her). She disliked the film, but enjoyed Mol's portrayal of her. Other complaints from Page included that the photographs taken with Mol as Page were all posed differently, one of the rape scenes depicted never took place, and that photographer Bunny Yeager swindled the filmmakers out of releasing pictures of Page unless they paid her.