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Once I worked in an industrial film. It was shot at a hotel in Atlantic City. I have no idea what industry it was extolling, but it was there, on that job, that I met my girlfriend, Brandy, a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn. Black-haired, dark-eyed, with a lush figure, she, like Bettie, had caught the acting bug.
Brandy made her living as a figure model. She posed for camera clubs. She posed in private sessions with amateur photographers. And she posed for Irving Klaw.
I was in the Klaw studio only once. That was the day I first saw Bettie Page on the street outside. Brandy was doing a shoot there. I met lrving Klaw, a cheerful, balding, rotund fellow, and his sister, Paula, a handsome, friendly woman who ran the studio operation and, ultimately, shot most of the 8mm and 16mm classics in the Klaw oeuvre.
These films were five or ten minutes long, silent and almost always in black and white. There was never any nudity and there were no men. The girls posed, danced, modeled bathing suits and lingerie.
Brandy and another girl, dressed in what appeared to be two-piece leather bathing suits, wrestled on a rug while Paula operated the camera and made suggestions. Now and then, a couple of other girls in various stages of undress wandered in and out of the dressing room, watched the scene and commented on the degree of difficulty of the unorthodox wrestling holds. I was, of course, playing it cool (as we said then), as though it were nothing special for me to spend a Saturday afternoon watching my girlfriend getting her head squeezed between another girl's powerful thighs.
In truth, I was somewhat confused. The atmosphere was a peculiar mixture of prurience and innocence, rather like a whorehouse sequence filmed by Steven Spielberg.
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The second time I saw Bettie was at Jim Atkins, a 24-hour restaurant on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. At four in the morning the place would be jammed with the determinably Beat and the desperately hip, crouched on stools at the curving counter, stoking their (usually) marijuana-induced feeding frenzies with jelly doughnuts and double orders of corned-beef hash. Confirmed junkies drank endless cups of coffee into which, for that added lift, they would stir the contents of Benzedrine inhalers.
She came in with some guy whom we all immediately hated, sat down, smiled and ordered something. Oatmeal, I think. Even the severely stoned sat up straight, stopped giggling and watched the spoon going in and out of her mouth.
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By 1955 Bettie was the Queen of Pinups, the main event in the Battling Babes series. She was the biggest hit on the photography-club circuit, the members of which paid a set fee for an afternoon field trip to some deserted meadow, park or farm in New Jersey or Connecticut.
Even some publisher named -- let's see -- Helkner or Hemler, something like that, selected her as his magazine's January 1955 centerfold. It's a picture shot by Bunny Yeager, the great cheesecake-and-glamour model turned great cheesecake-and-glamour photographer. In the photo, Bettie, dressed in an abbreviated Santa Claus outfit, is kneeling by a Christmas tree, winking at the camera and holding ornaments.
Bettie's legitimate acting credits are less memorable. She performed in several showcase productions and in a Long Island theater, playing the part of the sultry Gypsy dancer, Esmeralda, in Tennessee Williams' Camino Réal. She appeared in three exploitation burlesque films: Strip-o-Rama; Varietease, starring Lili St. Cyr; and Teaserama ("In Beautiful Eastman Color"), starring Tempest Storm and featuring "Saucy Betty Page." About the nicest thing Variety could find to say in its review was: "Apparently there's a market for this type product."
She also showed up in several TV variety shows, in bit parts, background, dressed as immodestly as standards and practices would allow.
A friend of mine who wrote for the Steve Allen Show remembers her. He says, "She did some bit with a bunch of other girls. There was too much hair spray and too much makeup."
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An advertisement for a burlesque theater in Jersey City proclaimed that Bettie Page would be on the bill for a week, performing a "naughty but nice" bathtub routine. Some friends and I sat through several performances, but she never showed up. Although I was severely disappointed, I could hardly blame her. It was a tacky joint, even by grindhouse standards, populated in the front rows mostly by middle-aged men with coats, hats or newspapers placed strategically on their laps.
Our evening came to an abrupt end when I leaned over and asked one of the patrons if I could borrow the sports section when he was through with it. I had to assume that he was not amused at my attempt at friendly jocularity when he threatened me with dismemberment.
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Bettie's personal life through these years was not one to write home about. She seemed to have had no close female friends. She did have a few lovers, mostly men who photographed her. They are remarkably uninsightful about her. Unless, of course, there's nothing to be insightful about. A couple of them asked her to marry them, but her hoped-for acting career came first.
One of them took a trip to Florida with her and briefly met a sister who, he reported, looked like Bettie but not as good. Another said that she was adept at lovemaking. All the men seem to have destroyed whatever private photographs they once had of her so that, apparently, the nature of their relationship with her would not be discovered by a past, present or future wife.
In spite of her admirable scholastic record, no one can remember her reading a book. No one recalls going with her to a play or a movie, though some think she had a particular fondness for Jimmy Dean, Gregory Peck and Bette Davis. No one remembers ever seeing her in any of her theatrical efforts. No one can remember her ever cooking a meal. She was polite, friendly, a good girl, a sweet girl, a trusting girl. She didn't gossip or complain or take the good Lord's name in vain.
Someone remembers an uncharacteristic flash of anger. The police descended on a photography club's field trip and cited everybody for indecency -- which, in those years, meant any behavior that couldn't be found in the text of a Dick and Jane book. At the moment of the bust, Bettie was relieving herself behind some bushes. Afterward, in the car going home, Bettie was in a silent rage. The photographers assured her that the penalty would be only a small fine. That wasn't the point, she said. "That man -- that policeman -- he saw me go!"
Then the Kefauver Committee came to town. Senator Estes Kefauver -- Democrat from Tennessee -- was, because of his affection for Davy Crockett headgear, referred to by some as the dork in the coonskin cap. Desperately trying to attract attention to himself after a failed presidential bid, Kefauver chaired a congressional committee investigating obscenity.
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