When was bettie page popular

Some of her photos featured spanking and bondage. Page professed to be mystified by all the attention, saying she never felt particularly attractive and had to wear a lot of makeup to cover up her large pores.

After she found God, she was initially ashamed of having posed nude. Bettie Mae Page was born on April 22, , in Nashville, one of six children. She and two sisters were sent to an orphanage after her father went to jail and her mother could not cope on her own. Page, armed with an arts degree with Peabody College in Nashville, did her first modeling work in the s after moving to San Francisco with the first of her three husbands.

After they divorced in , she pursued modeling in New York. Rund, who, in collaboration with the artist, social commentator and boulevardier Richard Merkin, published Private Peeks, the first Bettie Page reissues, back in After a brief marriage to a sailor, Bettie turned up in New York City in , hoping that the stage would do what the screen would not—take her seriously.

As the rest of the country snoozed in Cold War hibernation, Manhattan was just awakening to the Great Bohemian Renaissance. On the margins of the downtown scene, raffish characters like Lord Buckley, Mezz Mezzrow and John Willie heemed and scuffled, skimming off the extra bucks pumped out by the postwar prosperity machine.

The city offered many opportunities to bright, pretty, enterprising young women. One hot summer afternoon in at Jones Beach, Bettie attracted the attention of a black police sergeant and part-time photographer named Jerry Tibbs.

I would call her a most controlled young woman, quiet and composed. Soon Carr was arranging outings to a farm upstate in New Salem Dairy, where Bettie would pose for a couple dozen lens men at a time. Bettie then made her way into girlie magazines like Wink and Flirt and from there to an early Playboy Christmas centerfold, in which she was photographed wearing a Santa Claus hat and a smile.

It was inevitable that Bettie would come to the attention of Irving Klaw, who was known as the Pinup King. The balding, roly-poly Klaw had found his market niche by catering to customers who wanted pictures of bound women wearing high heels, stockings and the other trappings of sadomasochistic sex.

A soft-spoken but formidable woman, she chooses her words carefully when she talks about her association with Bettie. I only saw her when we worked together. Sometimes we would all go out to El Morocco after work and have dinner, but that was about it. I remember when word got back to us that Howard Hughes wanted to meet her. She had a boyfriend she supported, but I never saw him. I know she sent money to her family. She usually came to work in a sweater and dungarees. I never saw her dressed up.

She laughed at all the fan letters. The Klaws had been introduced to the bondage market in the late Forties by a wealthy patron, a lawyer known to everyone as Little John. He appears in candid photographs taken at the shoots, a small, shy, round-faced man with a sweet, embarrassed grin, surrounded by buxom, towering models. It was shot mostly on a tiny, bare stage dressed with thrift-store living-room furniture, but its very amateurishness lends it a sort of nostalgic charm.

For some of these productions, Bettie did no more than attempt to stay upright in oversize pumps clearly intended for a male cross-dresser while pacing back and forth for a camera fix-focused below her knees. In more ambitious episodes, Bettie swung suspended from elaborate rope-and-pulley rigs or abducted other models and loaded them into car trunks.

Whether as stern dominatrix or hapless captive, she emoted in the exaggerated style of a silent-film star, which, in effect, she was, since the loops had no soundtracks. According to Paula, the Klaws paid Bettie 10 dollars an hour for the sessions, which typically lasted five hours, with another fifty bucks thrown in as a tip. With sessions scheduled every Saturday and sometimes on Thursdays as well, the money was pretty good. At the time, secretarial work paid, perhaps, a dollar an hour.

And in those days, even brilliant typists had to make coffee. A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20, 4-byinch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from to The photos showed her in high heels and bikinis or negligees, bondage apparel -- or nothing at all.

Now I get it. There was a passion play unfolding in her mind. What some see as a bad-girl image was in fact a certain sensual freedom and play-acting - it was part of the fun of being a woman. Then she disappeared. Many years later, Bettie resurfaced and we became friends. Her passing is very sad. A religious woman in her later life, Page was mystified by her influence on modern popular culture.

Bettie Mae Page was born April 22, , in Nashville. She thought we were trouble. When I started menstruating at 13, I thought I was dying because she never taught me anything about that. After high school, Page earned a teaching credential. But her career in the classroom was short-lived. She tried secretarial work and marriage. But by she had divorced a violent husband and fled to New York City, where she enrolled in acting classes.

She was noticed on the beach at Coney Island by New York police officer and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs, who introduced her to camera clubs. Page quickly became a sought-after model, attracting the attention of Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake and bondage poses.

But he said to me, "Bettie, you've got a very high forehead. I think you'd look good if you cut some bangs to cover it. They say it's my trademark. My favorite actress of all times is Bette Davis in Dark Victory I have seen it six or seven times and I still cry. I never kept up with the fashions. I believed in wearing what I thought looked good on me.

I was never one who was squeamish about nudity. I don't believe in being promiscuous about it, but several times I thought of going to a nudist colony. I don't think my fans want to see me old and fat. I've got to get another lbs. I get sad when I see my favorite movie stars when they're old. Jack Lemmon is a fan of mine. I stopped coloring my hair in October I was no longer working as a secretary, I was no longer working out in public.

I didn't color my hair, it is gray now. In fact, I'm worried I'm losing it. Big gobs come out. Used to be it took me two hours to dry my big gob of hair.

I'm very sorry that when I turned my life over to the Lord Jesus in January , I threw out all my netstockings, bikinis--some from Frederick's of Hollywood. Usually, they would shoot four or five models every Saturday. He wouldn't pay for the regular pictures unless we did some bondage.

So I did bondage shots to get paid for the other photos. I love to swim in the nude and roam around the house in the nude. You're just as free as a bird! I don't know what they mean by an icon. I never thought of myself as being that. It seems strange to me. I was just modeling, thinking of as many different poses as possible. I made more money modeling than being a secretary.