Is there an art to being photographed? I believe there is, and when I say that, I am thinking of four artists in particular, all of whom reached their peaks in the 1950s - Elvis, Marilyn, James Dean, and the late Bettie Page. All of them had a special gift for communicating directly to the viewer through the camera's lens. The images they created will outlast all of us.
As Queens of the Still Photograph, Bettie and Marilyn had no rivals. Bettie was unique in that we know her almost exclusively through her pinup photographs - and a handful of mostly silent softcore "stag" films shot by Irving and Paula Klaw. She could look cute and cuddly - or dominant and mean - but whatever persona she adopted, the essential adorable Bettie always shined through.
I never met her, but I've talked with people who knew her fairly well (including one of her lawyers), and she was apparently just as sweet and charming in real life as she appears in her photos, with a delightful Southern drawl that most of us never heard. Following her '50s heyday, she went through a dark period, but the most important thing is that she got through it, and that she lived to enjoy her cult fame. In her photos she could be all things to all people, yet paradoxically she was always irreducibly herself.
See GreenCine Daily for more.
ADDENDUM 12/17 - Televangelist Robert Schuler delivered the eulogy at yesterday's memorial service held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park. Hugh Hefner attended. So did painter Olivia de Berardinis and Bettie's Teaserama co-star, Tempest Storm. After the service, Page's casket was taken from the chapel to a "shady grave site," just a few yards from the crypt of Marilyn Monroe.
Via the L.A Times.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Everybody's Dream Girl - Bettie Page (1923-2008)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Wow, I've had some mixed feelings about Bettie's passing. I agree that she had incredible beauty and charisma. But it's hard for me to get onboard with the amount of editorials I've read that posit her as "setting the stage for the sexual revolution"/ Bettie Page as freedom-fighter, whose mental illness and dark years were a result of being crucified by the big, bad blue-noses (as opposed to a result of the darkness she was exposed to working in pornography in the 1950s). Yes, she always had a great smile, which makes us feel better about seeing her in bondage scenarios, etc., but she was no performance artist seeking to "empower" herself by role-playing oppressive gender roles, blah blah blah... she was someone who regretted her pin-up work and the toll it took on her, even if she came to appreciate her notoriety later in life. (Most likely, she needed the money.)
Her photos will always be pretty haunting to me, and - knowing how many women in pornography still play out her story - difficult to see as harmless fun.
Anonymous -
I share your mixed feelings. However, I suspect that most of the mental illness that emerged during Bettie’s post-pinup years stemmed from the repression and molestation she suffered as a child growing up in Tennessee.
I also believe that the happiness we see in her pinup photos and short films was a genuine joy in creation - she was an active collaborator in these efforts, designing and making the costumes she wore, and choreographing her own dances. Moreover, her most memorable images were created in collaboration with other women - Paula Klaw in New York, Bunny Yeager in Miami and, much later, the paintings of Olivia de Berardinis.
Let Bettie have the final word: “I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."
Post a Comment