Bettie Page: Queen of Pinups
When I added Playful Promises’ Bettie Page lingerie to I love the 50s, I became curious about the woman who inspired this super sexy collection (see images immediately below). With her jet black hair, trademark ‘bangs’ and athletic figure, Bettie was simply stunning. So I did a bit of research and found out many interesting things about Bettie and how she became the ‘Queen of Pinups’.
Bettie Mae Page was born in 1923 in Nashville, Tennesse. She was the second of six children in a family that struggled financially, and money became even tighter when Bettie’s parents divorced. Her mother was working all hours and sent Bettie and her two sisters to live in an orphanage for a year. Her father was in prison and it later emerged that he had molested Bettie and her sisters during their childhood years.
Bettie was highly intelligent and excelled at school despite her difficult background, graduating with the second highest marks in her class. Less than two years later she married her classmate Billy Neal who was about to be drafted into the Army to fight in World War II. Bettie originally planned to be a teacher and gained a degree in education before changing her mind.
In the late 1940s Bettie divorced Billy and moved to New York City where she worked as a secretary. She hoped to become an actress but a chance meeting in 1950 set her on a different path. Bettie caught the eye of Jerry Tibbs when she was walking on Coney Island beach and he offered to photograph her. Jerry had spotted her pinup potential and gave her some priceless advice about her hairstyle.
Bettie later explained: “[Jerry was] the one who got me wearing bangs. For years I had my hair parted down the middle in a ponytail, tucked down around the sides. 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.’ Well, I went and cut the bangs, and I’ve been wearing them ever since. They say it’s my trademark.”
Jerry helped to make Bettie’s first pinup portfolio and introduced her to his friend Cass Carr. Cass ran a camera club which produced erotic photography and Bettie was recruited as a model, something she took to like a duck to water! Bettie was comfortable in her own skin and happy to pose nude for the club.
Cass described Bettie as a modest character: “She was a brilliant typist, and sometimes she would bring in work to do on my typewriter between posing sessions. I would call her a most controlled young woman, quiet and composed. She didn’t smoke or drink and didn’t much care for those who did.”
It was during this time that Bettie came to the attention of Irving Klaw, aka the ‘Pinup King’. Irving specialised in sadomasochistic photography and films featuring women in high heels, stockings and bondage gear. Although shocking for the time the photographs look fairly tame now. Sexual intercourse is noticeably absent and some of the scenarios can be described as comical. Bettie’s distinctive good looks and lack of inhibitions made her stand out in this underground scene, making her a popular bondage model and the top pinup in New York.
In 1954 Bettie met the photographer Bunny Yeager while on holiday in Miami. This led to a photo session at a wildlife park which included nude shots with two cheetahs! Bettie made the leopard print outfit she wore and often made her own costumes, lingerie and bikinis. The photo shoot brought Bettie to the attention of Hugh Heffner and she was chosen as ‘Playmate of the Month’ in the January 1955 issue of Playboy, creating huge demand for the Queen of Pinups during the rest of the year.
However, 1955 was also the year when things started to go wrong. Irving Klaw was ordered to appear before a committee that was investigating the effect of popular culture (including pornography) on juvenile delinquency. A high school student had been found dead in what appeared to be a bondage position, and parallels were drawn with a Bettie Page photograph, despite the fact there was no evidence that the boy had seen the image. Bettie and Irving’s working relationship only lasted for another two years until she converted to evangelical Christianity, turning her back on the limelight and fading into obscurity.
In the 1960s Bettie worked for Billy Graham and studied the Bible. She was deeply religious and wanted to be a missionary, but her status as a divorcee barred her from this particular vocation. Bettie had remarried Billy Neal but their reunion was short and they divorced again. She entered another marriage in 1967 but this also ended in divorce in 1972.
In the 1970s Bettie became seriously mentally ill and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. At the end of the decade she had a nervous breakdown and an altercation with her landlady led to 20 months in a psychiatric hospital. She was committed to a mental institution for eight years after another incident with a landlord and wasn’t released until 1992.
Unbeknownst to Bettie, she had been steadily gaining a cult following during the 70s and 80s. Olivia De Berardinis was one of the artists who took an interest in Bettie (the image is one of her paintings).
She explains: “In the mid-to late 70s, Bettie became the emblem of a deviant sub-culture, popping up in avant-garde fashion and art. She was the strong bodied bad girl, whose fetish pictures posited a sexual independence decades ahead of the era when she posed.”
In the early 90s Bettie was well enough to take step to claw back some of the profits other people had made from her likeness, appointing the management company that represents the estates of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. This helped to make her later life financially secure and to create renewed interest in her career. Despite this Bettie continued to shun the limelight and only gave a small number of interviews where she refused to show her face.
Bettie was dismissive of her status as a cultural icon: “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. I had a lot of free time. You could go back to work after an absence of a few months. I couldn’t do that as a secretary.”
Bettie died of a heart attack in 2008 at the age of 85. Since then her popularity has continued to surge, making her the thirteenth highest-paid deceased celebrity of 2017 (Forbes). So what is it about Bettie that keeps us interested after more than 60 years?
Olivia De Berardinis sums up Bettie’s enduring appeal: “There’s never been anyone like Bettie. Monroe had Harlow and Dietrich, she had all of those blonde bombshells, but there was nothing like Bettie. She was the first icon of her nature.”
Originally published at https://www.ilovethe50s.com on September 28, 2018.
