BETTIE PAGE
from Lost Girls Blog
Bettie Page was the biggest sex symbol of the 1950s. Her pin-up spreads are iconic, her body was unreal, and she’s forever known for her trademark jet black hair with those sleek brow-sweeping bangs. Bangs that have unfortunately been imitated by cringeworthy indie hipster girls everywhere, but she has yet to be outdone by them.
But what happened when the most famous sex symbol of the 1950s got tired of being ogled by dirty old men? Unfortunately, psychological decline, violence and disaster. Her later years were punctuated by schizophrenic and scary mental breakdowns.
Bettie left fetish modelling in 1959 to become a born-again Christian. She was 35 years old, in a dull marriage, and felt used and regretted her nude photos.
Some claim that Bettie had been informed that a man had died in a bondage session which had somehow involved her photos. This was just too much.
In 1972, her life fell apart. It reads like one long rap sheet.
In January, Bettie ran wild with a .22 caliber pistol screaming about “the retribution of God” at a ministry retreat.
In April, Bettie threatened to stab her ex-husband and children if they refused to pray in front of a portrait of Jesus. “If you take your eyes off this picture, I’ll cut your guts out!,” were her words. She was taken to a mental institution for 4 months.
In October, a cop was called to her ex-husband’s place yet again after Bettie went on a destructive rampage inside. After the officer left the car and returned, he “saw Bettie in the back seat, with her dress pulled up, panties around her knees, masturbating with a coat hanger that the officer had left.” She spent another 6 months in a mental institution.
Things were quiet for awhile until 1979, when she attacked 2 neighbours with a knife. The neighbours were forced to knock her out with a wrench. This time she spent 7 months in an institution.
The worst was yet to come. In 1982, she stabbed her landlady 20 times while yelling “God has inspired me to kill you!”
The poor landlady woke up to a possessed Bettie sitting on top of her with a foot-long serrated bread knife. Bettie stabbed her four times in the chest, narrowly missing her heart, stabbed her hand eight times, severing the top of her third finger.
When police came, they “found Bettie in the shower with her clothes on, trying to wash out the blood stains. She kept the police waiting for an hour before she dried herself off.” Afterwards, Bettie would spend 10 much-needed years back at an institution.
Following these deranged incidents, Bettie managed to get the help she desperately needed for her schizophrenia, and she stopped attacking people.
Sadly, she was penniless for many years, until her son and a team of lawyers helped her profit from royalties of her likeness which were being used in the media. She signed autographs of her pin-ups in her old age, and managed to gain a semblance of stability. Bettie died of a heart attack in 2008.
Her conflicted legacy still remains to this day. Every girl obsessed with vintage glamour wants to look like Bettie. But did we really understand her?
- Bettie Page and the Bondage She Freed Herself From
Robert Crumb on Bettie Page:
"I know quite a bit about Bettie Page, actually. I had a friend named Jeff Rund who was involved in trying to compensate her when she was old and broke and living in some trailer, in poor circumstances somewhere in the Los Angeles area, I believe. In the ’80s, some people started putting out books of photos of her and everything, and Jeff dug her up and tried to make sure she got paid for all the books, cause you know, she went crazy in the ’60s and ’70s, I think it was the ’70s, when she tried to kill somebody…
So she was institutionalized for a while, and then she got religion. I think she just had her picture taken so much, that it drove her insane. But guess what? She had the most perfect body and the cutest face of all in that pinup era of the 1940s and 1950s. She was the gold standard. There was nobody superior to her physically.
And her poses, she always looked cheerful and wholesome, she never looked sleazy. It didn’t matter if she was posing in a sadomasochistic setup with those high heel boots and whips, it always looks like it’s just a funny game to her, you know? She could have a ball-gag in her mouth and she looks like the girl next door just having fun. Isn’t this fun, playing at sadomasochism?’ [laughs]
She always comes off as this wholesome, lighthearted gal. But God was she healthy. Omigod! Perfect proportions, her whole body. Can’t go wrong with Bettie Page. Every photo of her is good, she never took a bad photo. And they took thousands? tens of thousands? of photos of her. Poor woman. What a life!"
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