Bettie Page Biography

Bettie Page, model

Birthplace: Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Birthdate: April 22, 1923

Sign: Taurus

Betty Mae Page was born to Walter Roy Page and Edna Mae Pirtle. She graduated from Hume-Fogg High School, a Nashville public magnet school, in 1940. Her grades in debate and other activities earned her the title of "salutatorian" and "Most Likely To Succeed." She also earned a scholarship to the local George Peabody University, where she intended to get a degree in teaching.

She also grew up to have one stunning figure, at 5' 5 1/2" tall, with 36" breasts, 23 ˝" waist, 36 ˝" hips and weighing 128 pounds. She switched majors in 1941 to acting. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1944. In 1950, she settled in New York City.

It was while in New York she did her first pinup session. She worked primarily for "camera clubs," basically fronts to photograph erotica, claiming they were art. By 1951, her reputation was established in a number of men's magazines, culminating with a center spread for Playboy. At the peak of her career, primarily with the photographer Irving Klaw, she even got bit parts on television and Broadway, including an appearance on the Jackie Gleason Show.

The political tide was turning against her though. Her photos were used as evidence on a Senate subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency headed by fellow Tennessean C. Estes Kefauver. It ended Klaw's business, and many of her photo negatives were destroyed. It apparently made Page reconsider her livelihood.

In 1958, she attended the Key West (Florida) Temple Baptist Church, converting to fundamental Christianity. She enrolled in such colleges as Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Multnomah School of the Bible and another Florida institute called Bibletown. Her modeling career was over.

For the next few decades she would move between Nashville, Florida and Los Angeles, focusing on charity work when not working as a secretary. She was unaware that a cult was building around her surviving photos. In 1976, books began publishing her photos.

Women began to cut their hair and wear similar outfits to emulate her. A fanzine, called the Betty Pages, started publishing. Most of her work became public domain, so a number of others started exploiting her image for all it was worth.

Page resurfaced in 1993, doing a telephone interview on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Page said she was "penniless and infamous." Then Entertainment Tonight did a segment saying she was living in a group home. She then consented to a much more detailed interview for The Betty Pages.

Her financial security was insured when she signed to the Curtis Management Group, who handled the estates of James Dean and another 50s pinup queen, Marilyn Monroe. Even though the subject of a number of books and documentaries, even two feature films starring Paige Richards and Gretchen Mol respectively, she held fast to not having photos of her taken since her pinup days. She'd rather her millions of fans remember her as she was, not as she looks today.

With nicknames like "The Dark Angel" and "The Girl With the Perfect Figure," it's likely no one will forget her.