Turning the Page

The cult fave, pin-up model Bettie Page, died the other day at age 85. I don't think anyone ever thought of her as being that age, because all of the pictures of her, and there are thousands out there, are of a young, voluptuous, beautiful woman.

I saw pictures of Bettie in 1966, after she retired as a model. A friend was showing me some old magazines and pointed her out. I was amazed at her beauty. I think everyone who sees her for the first time has that feeling.

Among her other modeling jobs, Bettie used to hire out to photography clubs. Guys with cameras would pay her to go on some location shooting, then take her picture. There could be thousands more pictures of Bettie we've never seen, from the late 1940's-early 1950s, in photo albums and in desk drawers. What she's most famous for, the pictures that helped sell hundreds of issues of magazines, "the kind men like," are everywhere. After her religious conversion Bettie went home to the South, then disappeared. There was a revival of her image in the 1980s, but she wasn't making anything off the public's appetite for her. She came forward and claimed her own pictorial representation. I hope she made some money from the process.

Page made an untold number of film loops and was the subject of photos with S&M as the theme. These were made by Irving Klaw in New York City, and sold to a specialized audience of guys who liked to see girls tied up or spanked. When I see pictures of S&M as it's done now it seems painful and dangerous, and someone could get seriously hurt. With Bettie you never got the feeling she was suffering; just that she seemed to be enjoying her work, and that for her it was all just another gig in front of the camera. In my adolescent mind the pictures of her in nylons and high heels seemed forbidden, mysterious, kinky. Nowadays you see stuff like that in the pages of fashion magazines. Apparently Bettie was about 50 years ahead of fashion. Either that or people looked at those old pictures and said, "That's the look I want for this ad!"

A captured still from the DVD, Bettie Page The Girl In The Leopard Print Bikini.

I believe that well into our current century, like Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page will remain the object of a loyal following.

Here's a great video. Someone matched up an old burlesque clip of Bettie with the song, "Can't Seem To Make You Mine," by the '60s group, The Seeds.