There’s a YouTube here of Betty Page. If you can’t see it please reload,
then contact Google and tell them to stop being evil.
Whether she was helping pack a girl into the trunk of a car or helping a woman get dressed, Bettie Page always seemed to be having fun. Without her smile a lot of the little movies she starred in would have been creepy and weird.
With her smile they were charming, and almost like tutorials on how to be sexy and have fun.
Bettie died on Thursday as a result of old age and complications arising from a bout of pneumonia. She was 85. She had one of the more interesting lives I’ve ever read about.
Crappy childhood, great student, became one of the highest paid models of her time, crashed, lived desperately poor on social security until she had a nervous breakdown and beat the crap out of her landlady.
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Bettie was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. As a result of the court decision she spent a couple of years in a mental institution in California where she became a “born-again Christian”. When she got out she joined up with Billy Graham, the “Pope of Protestant America”, as an advisor…
Bettie Page was an advisor to the man who counsels American Presidents.
While she was travelling the country with the Billy Graham Crusade during the 1970’s and 1980’s, she inadvertently became one of the most recognizable faces, and figures, on the planet.
At the same time she also became a powerful figure… almost a totem for many women. And a hero, if not a pioneer, of the women’s rights movement. If nothing else she was probably only second to the end of WW2 as being a cause for the Baby Boom… ask your parents.
Remarkable woman.
There’s no question with this NPD, I just wanted to mark the passing of someone who had lived a life.
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...salted lithium. 
Too bad all you ever hear about are her boobs essentially.
Sorry-the fan boy lust people have held for her blindly has always annoyed me. Nice to see you talk about the woman, not just the T&A. 🙂
I never knew of her. She is beautiful.
We’ve had a giant poster of Bettie up for years. It’s torn and crinkley and all full of tape at the edges. Gotta love Bettie
yep – she defintely did Live a Life.
did you ever see the movie made about her, I think Gretchen Mol played Bettie…..?
“The Notorious Bettie Page” (2005) starring Gretchen as Bettie. I saw the preview, and the reviews of the movie were almost all positive, but I never did see it even though I meant to… next time I’m at the “good” video store I’ll try to find it though. Gretchen was supposed to be really good.
That’s one of the major drawbacks of living in the country, there’s only one theatre nearby… it only plays the big movies, it only plays them after they’ve been out for two weeks, and the chairs are forty years old. If I want to see smaller movies I have to wait for the DVD or drive an hour to the city.
I didn’t discover Bettie until college when I was introduced to the ‘www’. I had no idea about her back story until about a year ago when I looked her up on Wiki. Fascinating woman.
I’ve got the DVD Gabriel. If you can’t find it anywhere let me know and I’ll mail it out to you some time
my husband has been a fan of bettie page for years. we both wear a very worn bettie t-shirt frequently. it truly was a sad day when she died. thanks for this post.
[I fixed the URL for you…]
Actually XUP, odd you should offer, I’ve been thinking about starting up some kind of revenue-neutral-mail-order-among-friends-a-la-NetFlix DVD exchange… in that the idea occurred to me and I wrote it down. I think the only thing holding me back from getting started is the friends part. Maybe we can start something…