In the followings we give you answers about Bettie in interesting things. It’s a biography in another way what follows her life, take by-passes for interesting details what made her famous and iconic.

Her family background before modeling

She was born in Nashwille, 1923 the second child of Edna Mae Pirtle and Walter Roy Page. The family was poor and they moved a lot to find more money and better living. When they had returned to Tennessee, there was many problems with her father ( prison included ) and her mother divorced him in the late 1930’s. Bettie attended in the Hume-Fogg high school and took her graduation in 1940, gone ahead to the George Peabody College because she wanted to be teacher.
In 1943 she was married with her first husband, Billy Neal but they divorced in 1947. In 1944 she received her teacher diploma but principally she did secretary works in many cities.

How did she became model?

Before the 1950’s, she already had little appearances in the stage as a model. In that year’s October she met the policeman Jerry Tibbs in Coney Island. He offered her to make a portfolio of her in his studio. There was a few photos from this serie what was published as the Harlem Newspaper’s cover and became popular. Bettie’s carreer has started! She started posing for amateur photo clubs, and was published in various cheesecake magazines by Robert Harrison as the Exeful or Titter. In the following years she was in New York and modeled for Irwing Klaw for his Movie Star News series, sometimes travelled in Florida, to pose for Bunny Yeager and other pin-up photographers. She do everyday life, bondage/fetish sets too with Irwing Klaw.

What about her legendary bangs?

She offered to do a new haircut with bangs when she worked with Jerry Tibbs because of her high forehead. She resolved this and here’s the story of her beautiful legendary bangs came from. She always took care of her hairstyle and in photoshoots too. She always rolled up her hair at nights and take extreme care of that.

,

Where did she get her colthes/costumes?

She learned to sew lot of things when she was younger so she can sew herself her bikinis, costumes. As she told: ” I’m never in steps with fashion. I think I should wear always what suits me.” Many of the fetish costumes are made by the Klaw studio, and from customers(like the extreme high heels, leathers, metal cup bra…); some lingerie from Federick’s.

, , , ,

What kind of films did Bettie?

Except of at least 50 loop(-> short film made by the Klaw studio), she danced in a 3 part burlesque film: Striporama(1953), Variatease(1954), Teaserama(1955). Once she was in a casting in Hollywood, but they didn’t like her productions…..and the real cause: she had never give her body for somebody for a role. Then she started learning acting as the pupil of Herbert Berghof and acting in some off Broadway works, TV shows like The US Steel Hour, The Jackie Gleason Show.

When did she appeared in Playboy?

In 1955 in the January issue as the playmate of the month, she was nude in a Santa hat. This wasn’t directly for Playboy and made by Bunny Yeager for another photoset and they accepted that photo to show in the magazine. There was another published photos of her in Playboy in the following periods when Hugh Hefner said she was his favourite Playmate. She said: ” She had the elegant innocence what is contemporary as provocative and nostalgic.”

To be continued!
Ghoulina von Royal

This entry was posted by Ghoulina on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Pin-up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.