Bettie Page

April 22, 1923 -- December 11, 2008

I was not trying to be shocking, or to be a pioneer. I wasn't trying to change society, or to be ahead of my time. I didn't think of myself as liberated, and I don't believe that I did anything important. I was just myself. I didn't know any other way to be, or any other way to live. --Bettie Page
"I was never the girl next door." "I like being outdoors. I like to go cavorting in the nude in the forests. It is just another world. To take sunbaths in the nude." "It makes me feel wonderful that people still care for me... that I have so many fans among young people, who write to me and tell me I have been an inspiration."

Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History. -- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Dec 6 2008 - Legendary

50s pin-up admitted to Los Angeles hospital.

85 year-old former pin-up queen Bettie Page was hospitalized in Los Angeles this week after a heart attack. Her condition has been described as critically ill." Page is an icon who rose to fame as an erotic model during the 1950s. She posed for scores of magazines, and also appeared in more than fifty short films. She worked extensively with sister and brother publicity team Paula and Irving Klaw, who sold Pages material from their firm Movie Star News. In 1955, Irving Klaw came under investigation during the U.S. Senates Kefauver Hearings, which were a politically motivated attempt to draw a link between pornography and juvenile delinquency. Under pressure, Klaw shuttered Movie Star News, and Pages modeling career ended. Page dropped from public view, spent time as Christian missionary, and married twice more (she had wed and divorced

twice already). In 1979, Hollywoods Belier Press reprinted some Page photos from private camera club sessions for which she had posed in 1950. The shots rekindled interest in Page, and in time a full-blown web-cult formed. In 2005 a motion picture entitled The Notorious Bettie Page was released by HBO with Gretchen Mol in the lead role. The film received wide acclaim, and further cemented Pages legacy.As one of the first mainstream nude models, Page is credited with helping usher in the womens movement.

At that time frank depictions of female nudity were considered empowering, and Pages popularity, as well as her special gift for embodying nudity as a natural state, dovetailed with the movements goals. Photographer and fellow pin-up Bunny Yeager, who shot the Modern Sunbathing & Hygiene cover above, offered an opinion in 1956 about Pages appeal: The first thing I noticed was that for some reason when shes nude she doesnt seem naked. [snip] Betties attitude toward her lovely, healthy body is the essence of nudism.
Naughty or Nice? Known as "The Queen of Curves" and "The Dark Angel," Page alternated between playing a stern dominatrix and a helpless victim.