• Hi, I am the owner and main administrator of Styleforum. If you find the forum useful and fun, please help support it by buying through the posted links on the forum. Our main, very popular sales thread, where the latest and best sales are listed, are posted HERE

    Purchases made through some of our links earns a commission for the forum and allows us to do the work of maintaining and improving it. Finally, thanks for being a part of this community. We realize that there are many choices today on the internet, and we have all of you to thank for making Styleforum the foremost destination for discussions of menswear.
  • This site contains affiliate links for which Styleforum may be compensated.
  • We would like to welcome House of Huntington as an official Affiliate Vendor. Shop past season Drake's, Nigel Cabourn, Private White V.C. and other menswear luxury brands at exceptional prices below retail. Please visit the Houise of Huntington thread and welcome them to the forum.

  • STYLE. COMMUNITY. GREAT CLOTHING.

    Bored of counting likes on social networks? At Styleforum, you’ll find rousing discussions that go beyond strings of emojis.

    Click Here to join Styleforum's thousands of style enthusiasts today!

    Styleforum is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Bettie Page Died Today @ 85 Years of Age

Tck13

Distinguished Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2006
Messages
5,296
Reaction score
62
Link to Article

1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85

By BOB THOMAS - 57 minutes ago

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

Page suffered a heart attack last week in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, her agent Mark Roesler said. 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.

The latter helped contribute to her mysterious disappearance from the public eye, which lasted decades and included years during which 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."

Her 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.
 

Full Canvas

Distinguished Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2006
Messages
1,031
Reaction score
3
RIP Bettie

Conspicuous in its absence is a post from Connemara. Maybe he's already on the way to the funeral thanks to another plane ticket from Mr. A.K.?

___
 

lefty

Stylish Dinosaur
Joined
Oct 27, 2006
Messages
10,764
Reaction score
4,566
My kind of girl.
bettie_01.jpg
RIP. lefty
 

Connemara

Stylish Dinosaur
Joined
Mar 9, 2006
Messages
38,384
Reaction score
1,827
Beautiful woman. I wouldve provided an obit but I'm trapped in our vacation home in the Adirondacks.

14 inches of snow
crazy.gif
blackberry is my only link to civilization. Well, so is the 50" TV, but you kn ow whath I mean
 

Get Smart

Don't Crink
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
12,102
Reaction score
271
RIP, she inspired legions of rockabilly girls to look like her this is my friend Bernie Dexter, who's a popular modern pinup model and you can see where she got her inspiration from. I dont think anyone else has done "Bettie" nearly as well...I'm sure she's quite heartbroken over this news Bernie, always paying homage to Bettie
162246_f520.jpg
bernie001.jpg
 

lefty

Stylish Dinosaur
Joined
Oct 27, 2006
Messages
10,764
Reaction score
4,566
Originally Posted by Get Smart
RIP, she inspired legions of rockabilly girls to look like her

162246_f520.jpg



God bless the rockabilly girl.

lefty
 

T4phage

Distinguished Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2003
Messages
5,973
Reaction score
671
R.I.P Bettie....

Bettie%20Page,%20color1.jpg
293.page.bettie.lr.120508.jpg

betfrusta23.jpg
-BettiePageTribute.jpg


..... no one comes close...
frown.gif
 

The Deacon

Distinguished Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2006
Messages
1,279
Reaction score
81
Did you all see the photos of Bettie in the last few years attending events at the Playboy Mansion? It was nice that she had made peace with her past(she subsequently had become very religious) and allowed us another chance to admire that beautiful face, even in her 70's!
 

tagutcow

Distinguished Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
9,220
Reaction score
625
I read "The Real Bettie Page", and the first line in the forward by Harlan Ellison wassomething like, "To this day, I can't look at a photograph of bettie Page without getting an erection." Considering he must have been around 70, that's quite a testament.

I started watching "The Notorious Bettie Page", but had to turn it off after five minutes.
 

rnoldh

Stylish Dinosaur
Joined
Jul 24, 2006
Messages
16,976
Reaction score
3,135
RIP Bettie.

She was the cat's meow back in the day.

Here's Bettie Page hanging out with Jack Ruby:

ruby3.jpg


Bettie always reminded me of Candy Barr ( who I once met in Texas in her later years ) though there was no relationship between them, that I know of.

Here's a picture of Candy Barr with her BF Mickey Cohen taken around 1959. Seems like another century & AAAMOF it was!

2008_0225_mystery_photo.jpg
:


All gone now. Bettie, Jack, Candy, and Mickey. A long past era.
 

LabelKing

Stylish Dinosaur
Joined
May 24, 2002
Messages
25,421
Reaction score
268
Another formerly big burlesque performer was Blaze Starr, whom I believe is still alive and does kitschy self-portraits:

blazestarr4a.jpg


When burlesque fell out of favor, you sometimes saw these gals performing at third-rate porno theaters before the films. It's all very bittersweet and poignant.
 

Tck13

Distinguished Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2006
Messages
5,296
Reaction score
62
Originally Posted by Get Smart

162246_f520.jpg


bernie001.jpg


I'm totally available to date your friend...

Originally Posted by The Deacon
Did you all see the photos of Bettie in the last few years attending events at the Playboy Mansion? It was nice that she had made peace with her past(she subsequently had become very religious) and allowed us another chance to admire that beautiful face, even in her 70's!

Interesting. I remember she had become very religious and reclusive but I didn't know that she emerged later in her life.
 

c3cubed

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
521
Reaction score
2
A real doll.
An original Vargas girl.

She was fantastic, and was one of the best models of genuine erotica.
 

bmulford

Distinguished Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2007
Messages
2,994
Reaction score
29
Originally Posted by Get Smart
RIP, she inspired legions of rockabilly girls to look like her

this is my friend Bernie Dexter, who's a popular modern pinup model and you can see where she got her inspiration from. I dont think anyone else has done "Bettie" nearly as well...I'm sure she's quite heartbroken over this news

Bernie, always paying homage to Bettie

162246_f520.jpg


bernie001.jpg



Coincidentally, just received an email announcement for a new lingerie line (Victoria's secret is also my secret). Appears to be your friend.
drool.gif


collage.jpg
 

Featured Sponsor

How important is full vs half canvas to you for heavier sport jackets?

  • Definitely full canvas only

    Votes: 55 36.7%
  • Half canvas is fine

    Votes: 59 39.3%
  • Really don't care

    Votes: 15 10.0%
  • Depends on fabric

    Votes: 26 17.3%
  • Depends on price

    Votes: 26 17.3%

Forum statistics

Threads
505,136
Messages
10,578,719
Members
223,894
Latest member
milesmartin274
Top