Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
The Betty Page Story
Remembering Betty
Starring Betty Page
The Film Shorts
Betty Page Magazine Appearances
Down Betty Page Memorabilia Lane
Acknowledgments
Copyright Page
Introduction
by Buck Henry
The first time I saw her was during the mid-fifties on a balmy fall afternoon in New York. I was standing outside the 14th Street building on whose side was pointed the giant sign for IRVING KLAW PINUP PHOTOS. A door opened and she came out into the street. Men and women turned to look at the long legs, the white, white skin and the black, black, black hair cut in bangs straight across her forehead. And, of course, the smile. It was the smile that could break your heart.
The oft-told Betty Page story is peculiara morality tale with no discernible moral, not much plot, and a leading character who is at best elusive. But that doesnt stop us from trying to glean some insight into her never-flagging popularity or from trying to construct some new theory about why she abandoned us.
The known facts of the story have been reexamined, rehashed, and recycled for three decades, mostly by die-hard fans (such as myself) who used the memory of her or the images of her or the memory of the images of her to fuel our fantasies. The story itself is banal: She came, she failed utterly to achieve her dream, she split.
And yet. And yet: She was known as the Queen of Curves, Miss Pinup of the World, the Queen of Hearts, the Dark Angel, the Queen of Bondage, etc.
An estimated half a million pictures were taken of her by almost every professional and amateur photographer in New Yorkincluding the renowned Weegee, who once climbed into a bathtub with her to get a shot, tried to cop a feel, and got smacked.
She left her cheesecake competition in the dust, appearing countless times on the covers and in the pages of every major and minor girlie magazine in the world.
In 1948 she arrived in New York. She was twenty-five years old. She rented an apartment in a converted brownstone on West 46th Street and worked as a typist for a company on Wall Street. She worked out in a gym every day. She didnt smoke. She didnt drink. She carried a brick in her purse to bash any would-be molester.
She was determined to become an actress. Why not? Anything is possible in New York.
We came to New York by the thousandsstarry-eyed kids drunk with ambition and movie-magazine success stories. We carried a suitcase in one hand and a piece of paper with a telephone numbersomeones uncle, someones friend, someones agentin the other.
We lived in rent-controlled apartments, waiting for that big break, working in restaurants, driving cabs, moving furniture, hawking Bibles door-to-door, playing chess for money in Washington Square, stealing. We made the rounds, surely the most demeaning, ego-busting, humiliating method of seeking employment ever invented. We lied about our credits, our ages, and our heights. We pretended we could tap-dance, speak with a Russian accent, juggle, fence, ride horses bareback. We sucked up to producers, agents, assistants, secretaries, anyone. We smiled at strangers.
On a summer day in 1952, a photographer saw Betty at Jones Beach, took some pictures of her, suggested she change her hairstyle to the bangs that became her trademark, and introduced her to Irving Klaw, the impresario of mail-order girlie pix.
Within two years Betty Page was a superstar in the strange, hermetic world of girlie pix. The customers of Klaws Movie Star News and Cartoon and Model Parade demanded more pictures of Betty. The photographers loved her. She would pose all day (at ten dollars an hour), nude or seminude, in dusty studios and dark apartments and outside in lousy weather. She didnt complain. The only problem they had with her was that she had trouble being on time. She was always late; once, it is said, three days late. But they would waitfor that look, for that smile.
The second time I saw Betty was at Jim Atkins, a 24-hour restaurant on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. At four in the morning the place would be jammed with the determinable Beat and the desperately hip, crouched on stools at the curving counter, stoking their (usually) marijuana-induced feeding frenzies with jelly doughnuts and double orders of corned-beef hash. Confirmed junkies drank endless cups of coffee into which, for that added lift, they would stir the contents of Benzedrine inhalers.
She came in with some guy whom we all immediately hated, sat down, smiled, and ordered something. Oatmeal, I think. Even the severely stoned sat up straight, stopped giggling, and watched the spoon going in and out of her mouth.
By 1955 Betty was the queen of pinups, the undisputed superstar of bondage pix, the main event in the Battling Babes series. She was the biggest hit on the photography-club circuit, the members of which paid a set fee for an afternoon field trip to some deserted meadow, park, or farm in New Jersey or Connecticut.
Even some publisher namedlets seeHelkner or Hemler, something like that, selected her as his magazines January 1955 centerfold. Its a picture shot by Bunny Yeager, the great cheesecake-and-glamour photographer. In the photo, Betty, dressed in an abbreviated Santa Claus outfit, is kneeling by a Christmas tree, winking at the camera, and holding ornaments.
An advertisement for a burlesque theater in Jersey City proclaimed that Betty Page would be on the bill for a week, performing a naughty but nice bathtub routine. Some friends and I sat through several performances, but she never showed up. Although I was severely disappointed, I could hardly blame her. It was a tacky joint, even by grind-house standards, populated in the front rows mostly by middle-aged men with coats, hats, or newspapers placed strategically on their laps.
In 1957, Betty packed it all in. She went to Florida, modeled for three or four years, and then disappeared. Utterly.
What became of her? Here is a selection of the rumors that I have heard over the years:
After gangsters threatened her life, she had plastic surgery and went to live in Europe.
She entered a convent.
She secretly married a minor film star, or the brother of a minor film star, or a friend of a minor film stars lawyer, and lives with him in Canada.
What happened, of course, is much less colorful. Probably, as most of those who were close to her believe, she went back to Tennessee, got married, had kids, and settled down to a decent stable Baptist life. By now, if shes still alive, shes pushing seventy.
Theres a man in California who claims to be her brother. Hes not talking. There are others, Bunny Yeager among them, who undoubtedly know where she is, but they are keeping her secret. A tidy sum of money was recently offered to her through intermediaries if shed surface and tell her story. The response, if indeed it was an authentic one, seemed to have something to do with the Lords work.
