WELL HELLO THERE, SUGAR!
"It has often been said that Bettie Page, the legendary '50s pinup with the pert features framed by those famously severe black bangs, was the rare American sex goddess who was equally at home projecting the image of a good girl or a bad girl. Frolicking, naked, in the ocean foam, her leg extended with playful pleasure, she was all dazzle and sunshine: the girl next door who said yes yes yes. In her scandalous underground bondage photos, where she posed as a dominatrix with a whip held high, or as a masochist with a ball in her mouth, she vamped like a pussycat from hell, her eyes narrowing with mean delight--or widening in mock terror. Yet the mysterious alchemy of Bettie Page isn't just that she could turn on a dime from light to dark, saint to sinner, virgin to vixen. It's that she was somehow able to project both qualities at once. In bondage photos, so shocking for their time, her warm-spirited, peekaboo vibrance doesn't disappear; it's there just beneath the surface aggression of her pores. As for the all-American cheese shots, they have a quality of delirious, laughing abandon, as though she were winking at the she-devil inside. What Bettie Page conjured--always--was the promise of pleasure without limits. She was a one-woman orgy in centerfold form.
Soft, eager, and polite, with a twang that only enhances her apple-pie sweetness, Bettie, a demure Christian girl from the outskirts of Nashville, arrives in New York City in 1949 with dreams of becoming an actress. A traditional girl, caught in a society ran on men's whims, with a free spirit locked deep inside her. She wouldn't look out of place in a typing pool, yet the one thing she truly knows, for all modesty, is that she's pretty, so when a man on the beach asks her to model for some photographs, she thinks, 'Why not?' Posing for amateur 'camera clubs,' Bettie gets in touch with her exhibitionist. As she strolls through the woods with one of the members, she volunteers to take off her bikini top, then her bottom, too and suddenly, her skin shines, her smile is flirty glee, and she wiggles her rump in triumph. Standing, in her full tawny glory, in the sun, like Norma Jean before she became Marilyn Monroe, Bettie is more than radiant, her blissful lack of self-conciousness creates a magical state.
Bettie, in a strange way, is never more Christian than when she asserts the holiness of her own body. Later, in the studio of Irving Klaw, who does fetish photographs for specialty clients, she puts on all that bondage gear--corsets, leather boots laced up to her thigh--as if it were a sci-fi costume, and when the photographer, a gently scurrilous bloke, asks her to snarl like a tiger, she does, and beautifully, but she's really just a little girl playing dress-up.
Bettie Page is simply the tantalizing enigma of a girl who couldn't truly be 'bad' because she made sex divinely delicious."-Entertainment Weekly, April 21, 2006
SPOUSES:
"February 1943, Bettie married her boyfriend of two years, Billy Neal. After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree from Peabody College, Bettie moved to San Francisco to be with Billy. It was in San Francisco that Bettie got her first modeling job at a local furrier where Bettie modeled fur coats for clients.
For the next few years, the free-spirited Bettie traveled from San Francisco to Nashville to Miami, even to Portau-Prince, Haiti, where she fell in love with the country and its culture. Back in the United States, in November 1947, Bettie filed for divorce from Billy and moved to New York.
On November 26, 1958, Bettie married her second husband, Armond Walterson. During the following months, Bettie tried numerous jobs, and she traveled to numerous states including California, Tennessee, Illinois, and Oregon. In 1963, Bettie divorced Armond. She would later marry Harry Lear, a marriage that also ended in divorce.
PRESENTLY: Through the 1980s and the 1990s, Bettie Page re-surged as a modeling icon. The media, intrigued by her mysterious disappearance launched a countrywide search for Bettie. Comic books soon featured characters that resembled Bettie, contemporary artists such as Olivia, Dave Stevens, and Robert Blue immortalized their idol with their powerful images. Today, Bettie is enjoying her private life with her family.
Bettie's undeniable influence is present still today in fashion, films, and magazines just to name a few. The dark-haired girl from Nashville has become a living legend, a modern icon, a symbol of beauty and femininity that transcends ordinary standards. In the heart of her adoring fans, Bettie will forever remain the queen of pinup." -BettiePage.com
