Bettie Page

Saw "The Notorious Bettie Page" bio pic. The actress playing Bettie, Gretchen Moll, did a great job. The film proves what I knew all along, that brunettes totally rule.
It's a pretty good movie with a lot of information I never knew about her. I did know she worked for Irving Klaw in the 1950s as a model and was into making bondage/dominatrix films. I wasn't aware that she was more photographed than Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford put together. I also was unaware of her strong religious background and how after she left modeling she became heavily active in her church. She was naive and young and didn't understand she was participating in a sexy romp in front of the camera.
There was always this mysterious aura about Bettie Page. I first became aware of her in my early 20s and back then, nobody knew where she was. She'd been out of the public eye for many years when the resurgance kicked in. A cult following formed around these grainy black and white, campy images of a beautiful brunette in stockings and wielding a whip. Now Bettie Page can be found on lunchboxes, T-shirts and in books dedicated to her photos. Once obscene materials and the subject of Congressional hearings, her image is a tame throwback to milder times, when titillation meant brown paper wrapped magazines and discrete ogling of a shapely calf, a high heel and a sly smile.