All-American girl

by RICHARD JONES

BETTIE PAGE is an American country girl from Tennessee who became a pin-up girl for men's magazines in the much-censored 1950s.

Mary Harron's film 'The Notorious Bettie Page' details Bettie's rise to icon status as the most well-known model of her time - if only in the specialist genre of pin-up and bondage photography.

It seems remarkable to consider now but in the 50s Bettie Page was as famous to her fans as Marilyn Monroe was to the wider movie-going audience.

Bettie (Gretchen Mol) remains unaffected and cheerful as New York photographer Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer) snaps her in a string of bondage pictures, photographs which became her signature.

She was snapped in poses while tied, handcuffed and chained causing Klaw's sister Paula (Lili Taylor), with whom he worked, to muse: "Boots and shoes - shoes and boots. They can't get enough of them. Why? I guess it takes all kinds to make a world."

By 1955 the Klaws were one of the targets of the US Senate hearings into pornography, chaired by Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn).

Following evidence during the Senate hearings, part of which detailed the death of a young man attempting something he'd seen on a Klaw film, the Klaws left the business.

Bettie moved south to Florida where she began posing for cheesecake and naturist photographer Bunny Yaeger (Sarah Paulsen).

Later still she drifted out of modelling and became a born-again Christian. During this period of her life Bettie never apologised for her work, believing that if God had created the female form no one should be offended by it.

Director Harron recreates the 1950s using black and white shots, switching to Technicolour sequences to depict Bettie's happiest moments.

Now 84 Bettie Page continues to correspond with some of her faithful long-term fans, presumably also in their 80s. And there are innumerable fan sites on the internet, featuring pictures from Bettie's heyday.

5 May 2007

australianrules.com.au

Disclaimer