Bettie Page

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After working briefly in Haiti as a secretary at a furniture company, she moved to New York City, where she supported herself as a secretary while looking for work as an actress. While she appeared in a couple of Off-Broadway plays in 1956, Page found her fame and success in modeling, first for camera clubs, then later for commercial redistribution. She learned of this line of work through a chance encounter in 1950 with Jerry Tibbs on a deserted beach at Coney Island. Tibbs also suggested her trademark bangs (fringe).

At first Page posed for camera clubs, frequently in the nude, because the photographs were not to be published. In 1951 her image appeared on the cover of men's magazines with names like Eyeful, Wink, Titter, Black Nylons, or Beauty Parade. At the same time she posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with a Pin-up, bondage or sado-masochistic theme, making her the first famous bondage model.

During one of the annual pilgrimages to the sun, sand and surf she adored, Bettie Page met Bunny Yeager in Miami, Florida in 1954. At that time Page was the top Pin Up model in New York, and Yeager a former model and aspiring photographer. Bunny signed Page for a photo session at the now closed African wildlife park Africa USA in Boca Raton, Florida. The “Jungle Bettie” photographs from this shoot are some of her most celebrated and include nude shots with a pair of cheetahs who were named Mojah and Mbili. The leopard skin patterned “Jungle Girl” outfit she wore for the shoot was made by Bettie herself.

After Bunny Yeager sent shots of Bettie Page to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, she was featured as Playmate of the Month and centerfold for Playboy magazine in its January 1955 issue. Bettie also became one of Hefner's obsessions. When Page was almost forced to file for bankruptcy, it was Hefner who bailed her out.

In an industry where the average career of a model was measured in months, Page was in demand for several years, modelling until 1957. Although she frequently posed in the nude, she never appeared in any scenes with explicit sexual content. When Howard Hughes, movie maker and billionaire, sent her a letter asking to meet her, she declined.

The reported reasons for her departure from modelling work are varied. Some authorities state she was burnt out and her marriage to Armand Walterson in 1958 was the cause, but she'd quit modeling long before the ceremony. Others mention the “Kefauver Hearings” of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which ended Irving Klaw's bondage/S&M mail-order photography business. In any case, shortly after her marriage to Walterson, she experienced a conversion to Christianity on December 31, 1958, and severed all contact with the prior life. For many years, the last known facts of her life were her divorce from Walterson in the early 1960s, and that she was working as a secretary for a Christian organization.

Many modern-day Bettie-inspired models such as Bernie Dexter, Dita Von Teese, and Nina Elizabeth Page (no relation) are revered for their classic beauty and resemblance to Bettie Page. Actress Musetta Vander was deliberately made up to resemble Page playing the whip-wielding "Lash" in the science fiction film Oblivion (and its sequel). Another actress sporting a Page-inspired look isPauley Perrette, who plays a quirky Goth forensic scientist on the TV series NCIS (and more). Alexis Payne and countless other underground fetish film performers continue to copy Page's trademark severe bangs, dominatrix outfits and attitude displayed in the Irving Klaw photos.

A biographical movie,The Notorious Bettie Page, was released in 2005, and showed in theaters in 2006. It is based on the story of Bettie Page from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, and stars Gretchen Mol as the adult Bettie.

Many of Page's short films have been reissued to DVD, as have her appearances in films such as Teaserama. Recent made-for-DVD documentaries about her include Bettie Page Uncovered and Bettie Page:The Girl in the Leopard Print Bikini.