Bettie Page, luminosa encarnación del erotismo prohibido de la década de los cincuenta, falleció el pasado jueves en un hospital de Los Ángeles. Page, de 85 años, estaba en tratamiento por una pulmonía cuando sufrió un ataque al corazón. De nombre verdadero Betty Mae Page, nació el 22 de abril de 1923 en Nashville. No había entonces música
country en aquella ciudad de Tennessee, que era reconocida como el centro de la religiosidad fundamentalista sureña, un ambiente que marcaría a la joven Betty. Según ella, creció entre penalidades y abusos paternos.
En los años cuarenta, Betty soñaba con ser estrella del cine pero la realidad resultó más prosaica: ejerció de maestra y se casó con un soldado, del cual se divorciaría. Malvivía como actriz en Nueva York cuando, en 1950, llamó la atención de Jerry Tibbs, policía aficionado a la fotografía. De su mano entró en el sigiloso mundillo de los erotómanos.
Con su espléndida figura y su reconocible peinado, Betty se convirtió en la favorita de los aficionados que consumían semiclandestinas
revistas para hombres y que encargaban sesiones fotográficas -y cortos cinematográficos- que reflejaran sus obsesiones, muchas veces relacionadas con los zapatos de tacón de aguja, las medias, los ligueros o los látigos. Los hermanos Irving y Paula Klaw encaminaron a Betty / Bettie hacia el sadomasoquismo suave entre mujeres mientras que otro fotógrafo, Bunny Yeager, se especializó en retratarla como reina de la jungla. Se trataba de material que se vendía bajo cuerda o por correo
.Como modelo, Page transmitía una inocencia, un deleite libre de culpabilidad. Alcanzó su máximo reconocimiento en 1955, cuando fue protagonista de las páginas centrales de
Playboy. Sin embargo, ese mismo año fue convocada por un comité del Senado que investigaba la pornografía; no llegó a testificar pero se fue desencantando y en 1957 dejó el negocio.
A partir de ese momento, su vida está envuelta en misterios. Contamos con la verdad oficial establecida en su autobiografía
Bettie Page: the life of a pin-up legend (1996), pero también hay un libro más descarnado,
The real Bettie Page (1997), de Richard Foster, que serviría de base para el largometraje
The notorious Bettie Page, dirigido por Mary Harron, la primera de varias películas sobre sus andanzas. Se sabe que se casó varias veces y que, arruinada, sufrió una crisis nerviosa.
Detenida por atacar a los dueños de su casa, fue internada en una institución mental. También se transformó en una cristiana renacida. Intentó viajar a África como misionera, pero su pasado resultó ser un inconveniente, aunque hay testimonios de una estancia proselitista en Angola. Encerrada en su mundo bíblico, Betty ignoraba que volvía a ser popular.
A partir de 1976, empezaron a publicarse libros que recopilaban sus famosas fotos; también se reeditaron sus cortos. Apareció en portadas de discos, camisetas y todo tipo de objetos. Su personaje inspiró a dibujantes de cómics y Quentin Tarantino se fijó en su estética para la Umma Thurman de
Pulp fiction. Sus poses eran imitadas por las nuevas practicantes de los espectáculos
burlesque.
A principios de los noventa, Bettie descubrió que era el centro de una notable industria e intentó -no siempre con éxito- cobrar
royalties. Ocasionalmente concedió entrevistas, incluso en televisión, pero se negaba a aparecer con su imagen actual. Quería mantener el recuerdo de la sinuosa Bettie Page. Y deseaba distanciarse de la pornografía contemporánea: aseguraba que nunca apareció desnuda y que todo eran juegos con cuerdas y fustas. Fue, insistía, una mera modelo profesional que se desenvolvió en un campo especializado: "Era más divertido que estar ocho horas atada a una máquina de escribir".
LOS ANGELES –
Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.
Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in
Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."
Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling
Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder
Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."
Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with
old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."
The
21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.
Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "
The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "
Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "
Betty Page: Pinup Queen."
Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."
Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at
Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.
Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."
Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity.
Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."
In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.
"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.
Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of
Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.
Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.
She moved to
Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her
high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.
Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in
Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.
After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.
A move to
Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.
She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.
A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.
"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."
Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.
He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.
"
Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ...
Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.
Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."
The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.
After the Pages moved to
Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.
In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in
New York and win a screen test from
20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
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