OT: A Pin-up Legend Dies
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  1. #1

    OT: A Pin-up Legend Dies

    LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.

    Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.

    "She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."

    Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.

    Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.

    "I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."

    Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.

    After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.

    "I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."

    The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.

    Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."

    Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."

    Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.

    Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."

    Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."

    In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.

    "I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.

    Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.

    Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.

    She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.

    Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.

    In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.

    After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.

    A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.

    She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.

    A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.

    "She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."

    Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.

    He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.

    "Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.

    Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."

    The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.

    After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.

    In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
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  2. #2
    I was very much saddened to hear of her passing. Here's to a true beauty; rest in peace ma'am. :ernae:

  3. #3
    dhenriques
    Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by nightshade View Post
    LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.

    What can be said about Betty Page? I'll tell you the truth. It's a strange feeling of nostalgia I get as I sit here tonight reading that she has gone.
    I never met her. I never knew her, but Betty Page was as much a part of my adolescence as were the teachers who helped mold me into manhood.
    As I sit here tonight discussing the passing of Ms Page with my lovely wife of 45 years I find myself reminiscing of days long gone by when I was a boy of 13 enrolled in a parochial military academy where even knowledge of people like Betty Page was, shall we say, frowned upon.
    I can remember the small book one of the boys in the next dormitory had smuggled into the school and how all of us gathered together in the dark after lights out with one of the boys stationed by the door watching for the night nun while we pulled a blanket over our heads, pulled out a flashlight and looked in awe at the woman in the pictures who all of us instinctively knew was the girl we REALLY wanted to meet some day but didn't yet quite know why :-)
    Betty Page was indeed a part of our passage into manhood for many of us out here.
    I'm fairly certain that all over the United States tonight and even possibly in other parts of the world, there are good men strong and true reading about Ms Page passing who will pause for a moment as I have done, and just for an instant remember her and smile secretly.
    Rest in peace Betty, and thank you for the memories.
    Dudley Henriques

  4. #4
    Someone needs to make a betty page memorial repaint for either the A2A bombers or the AS b-24
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

    She flies with the grace of an angel, but takes
    punishment like a boxer and keeps on flying
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Myspace Profile

  5. #5
    Bettie's life story is really interesting to read about. I highly recommend Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-up Queen and The Real Bettie Page.

    Between the two books, her story is laid out and the mystery of her disappearence so many years ago is solved (many gaps filled in by Bettie herself).

    It always struck me that she was really amazed that so many people had any interest in her so many years after her career had ended.

    "It was just 7 years of my life," she said in an interview; but was delighted that so many people were interested. She was a very frank person, not at all shy about speaking of her modeling days. "I was just being me."

    She did a number of interviews after her rediscovery in the 90's but only allowed her picture to be taken once. On several instances, she always said that she wanted to be remembered as she was in her photos from the 50's and enjoyed her "simple, but private life."

    She will be missed by this fan.

    "Hornets by mandate, Tomcats by choice!"

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