Sex, God and Bettie Page

On 4 July the film historian Richard Bann went to an Independence Day party on the sprawling estate of Playboy's founder, Hugh Hefner, in the exclusive Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles. The billionaire publisher normally wears pyjamas at these little get-togethers, but this time he was wearing a shirt. "It was a collage of maybe 200 different photographs," says Bann.

Every photo depicted the same woman, her raven-black hair falling across her forehead. Her eyes were sparkling in many shots, though in some they were wide in a theatrical gesture of shock. She could look coy or sweet and innocent... even with her clothes off.

"I think it's something that we licensed," adds Bann, who is also an executive with CMG Worldwide, the company that controls the commercial exploitation of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and the woman on Hefner's shirt, Bettie Page.

For many men of a certain age, Page would have been the first woman they saw naked. Like Monroe, the curvaceous Miss Page featured in one of the early issues of Playboy, back in 1955. She was one of America's top models and the same shot of her appeared on the cover of both Fats Waller's Ain't Misbehavin' album and a London Concert Orchestra recording of Carmen.

But she also appeared in bondage, S&M and other fetish photographs, was named in a congressional investigation into pornography, quit modelling in 1957 and mysteriously disappeared.

Today there are dozens of internet sites devoted to her and a new feature film, The Notorious Bettie Page, opens in the UK next month, starring Gretchen Mol and directed by Mary Harron, who made American Psycho. Her confident and very feminine sexuality, her sense of fun and the mix of naughty and nice have attracted a new generation of fans, male and female.

The CMG website alone has recorded more than 750 million hits in six years and merchandise includes Bettie Page books, videos, posters, photographs, keyrings, lighters, fridge magnets and of course shirts. You can also buy Bettie Page comics, playing cards and trading cards, action figures and even Bettie Page air freshener.

Page was born in 1923 into a large and seemingly devout Christian family in the conservative southern state of Tennessee, though she later revealed her father sexually molested her, before getting a teenage girl pregnant and clearing out. Page spent part of her childhood in an orphanage.

Despite early difficulties, she was an outstanding student and reputedly missed out on a scholarship to the prestigious Vanderbilt University by the narrowest of margins. The new film suggests she was penalised for missing an art class but, in a rare interview years ago, Page said her mother's boyfriend made a pass at her, her mother threw her out and she did not have access to her revision notes.

She trained as a teacher and worked as a secretary in Haiti. A chance encounter led to work as a model. She posed in underwear for men's private camera clubs and shot photo spreads for evocatively titled magazines such as Wink, Eyeful and Titter.

She wore a Santa hat and nothing else for the January 1955 issue of Playboy and was variously labelled Miss Pinup Girl of the World, Model of the Century and Queen of Curves. Less widely known was her work with siblings Irving and Paula Klaw. They made short burlesque films, with titles such as Teaserama, and for "special customers" they photographed Page in high heels and lace-up boots, tied up with a ball-gag in her mouth, being spanked across another girl's knee, and brandishing a whip with all the menace of a pantomime villain.

The fetish pictures are tame by today's standards. There is a sense of theatre, even parody, about them. There was no sex and, as Mary Harron, director of the new film, points out, no men.

But they were too much for American politicians and churchmen in the strait-laced 1950s. A congressional investigation heard that a youth had killed himself while trying to copy one of Page's bondage photographs. Ironically he was a Boy Scout, who should have been familiar with knots. Soon after the hearings Page disappeared.

The revival of interest was gradual. In the late 1970s some photos were reprinted in book form. In the 1980s, Dave Stevens based the girl in his Rocketeer comic on Page, and more and more artists used her, in absentia, as their model. Her photographs, which had helped sow the seeds of the sexual revolution, now began to influence the showbiz and fashion scenes.

In the 1990s Dark Horse Comics gave her her own comic-book. Suddenly she was up there with Superman and Batman in a series of exotic fictional adventures, which generally involved her being near-naked and often tied up.

Few knew what had happened to the real Bettie Page, however, or even whether she was still alive. In 1996 an authorised biography revealed that had devoted herself to church work and was living quietly in California.

The cosy image was quickly shattered by a second, unauthorised biography, The Real Bettie Page: The Truth about the Queen of Pinups, which revealed a history of violence, mental illness and incarceration.

While some demonised the writer, Richard Foster, for besmirching the girl of their fantasies, others argue his book reveals the human frailty of its subject.

In 1998 Page appeared in Playboy again, giving a rare interview in the presence of Hefner himself and branding the book "lies".

Now 83, Page spends much of her time reading the Bible, rarely goes out, shuns publicity and was not involved in the film. The Los Angeles Times did manage a brief interview with her a few months ago at the CMG offices while she signed pictures, though she refused to be photographed. "I want to be remembered as I was when I was young," she said. "I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

There is a suggestion of some regret over the bondage pictures, maybe, but there are no easy answers when it comes to Page. She is, in the words of Richard Bann, "a conundrum... full of contradictions". The bondage and the enigma are part of her appeal, for men and women. "Young women say I helped them come out of their shells," she said.

Women are attracted by her apparent confidence in herself and her sexuality, while men praise her sexiness, style and her obvious physical charms. Bettie Page is different things to different people. Unlike most icons, however, she is still alive, and Richard Bann was there when she watched the film that bears her name at a private screening at Hefner's mansion. He says she was "very upset" - not that it was untrue, but that it projected episodes she had forgotten or at least tried to forget.

(NYTimes)