December 12, 2008
BOUND FOR GLORY:
Bettie Page, the model who sparked sexual revolution, dies in LA at 85 (David Usborne, 12 December 2008, Independent)
Her career, that some have said laid the foundations for the sexual revolution that came to America in the 1960s, started almost by accident after she discovered that posing for amateur photographers in provocative poses and risqué attire made her more money than working as a secretary.Ms Page’s fame was set after she was adopted by Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who had a Manhattan mail order business offering cheese cakes and dirty pictures. Years later, she became one of the first models |featured in Playboy as a centre-fold including one in 1955 with her winking under a Santa hat.
The magazine’s founder and friend of Betty in recent years, Hugh Hefner, said: “Bettie Page was one of Playboy magazine’s early Playmates, and she became an iconic figure, influencing notions of beauty and fashion. Her passing is very sad.”
Ms Page disappeared for decades at the end of the fifties, suffering serial broken marriages and, for many years, devoting herself to Christianity.
In the recent biopic, The Notorious Bettie Page, Gretchen Moll does a fine job of capturing the bizarrely naive lasciviousness that made her a phenomenon.
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