PLAYBOY: It was hardly discreet to pose nude in the Fifties. Why did you do it?
PAGE: God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds. If they hadn't listened to the devil they could have been nude all their lives and as happy as larks. I always went around my apartment in New York totally nude. I swam in the nude, even considered joining a nudist colony. I do not believe in flaunting it, though.

PLAYBOY: But aren't you famous for flaunting it?
PAGE: No. My nude poses were mild. I frowned on any sort of pornography. I never did open poses. Except...well, there was one night. I went to a party; there were five camera clubs there and several models. They kept giving me drinks. I remember posing for them, doing some nude shots for the camera clubs. After that I must have been drunk, they must have talked me into doing some open poses.

PLAYBOY: The police later threatened you with copies of those photos.
PAGE: You could get arrested for that in those days.

PLAYBOY: Wasn't there an unwritten rule that camera club photos were for private use only?
PAGE: The dog who took those pictures sold them for $800. They were sold under the counter, but the police found out and confiscated them. They knocked on my door one morning: "Bettie, we have something to show you." They had open poses. My face dropped, I was so shocked. They had close-ups, too.

PLAYBOY: Do you remember your first nude pose? We hear it happened after Jerry Tibbs introduced you to fellow hobbyists in camera clubs.
PAGE: That wasn't it. What happened was, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park when a fellow came up and said, "You have a beautiful face and a nice figure." He was a young photographer. He took some pictures. He asked me to pose nude and I didn't mind. I was in good shape back then. I never had qualms about being nude, though I didn't believe pubic hair should be showing in pictures.

PLAYBOY: Did you have any sexual problems?
PAGE: I wouldn't have intercourse with my first boyfriend until after we were married. Not even on our wedding night. That was because my father molested me as a child; I didn't care for sex for a long time after that. I got over it. I believe that two people who love each other should make love. Sex is part of love.

PLAYBOY: In 1957, after your Dark Angel period, you dropped off the cultural screen. It would be decades before Dave Stevens with The Rocketeer, Robert Blue with his oversize bondage paintings and other fans would start a Bettie Page revival.
PAGE: Robert Blue painted my body all right, but not my face. I did not have a little tiny bird mouth and a frown line over my nose.

STEVENS: He liked the darker Bettie. What about the banana leaf one, where you're squatting on the ground in a leopard outfit?
PAGE: Yeah, that's not bad.

STEVENS: And the one where you're spanking the girl on the couch ----
PAGE: That looks like me. That's a nice profile of me.

PLAYBOY: Were you ever ashamed of your work?
PAGE: 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. I got tired of sitting at a desk all day.

PLAYBOY: Are you a feminist?
PAGE: Women should have equal employment rights. A woman who does the same job as a man should get the same money. As for women who don't want men to be courteous, to give a girl their seat on a bus, I don't go in for that. I think women should enjoy those niceties and courtesies from men.

PLAYBOY: Take us back to the gala Beaux Arts Ball at the Waldorf Astoria in 1951. You made headlines.
PAGE: Robert Harrison published girlie books, Wink and Flirt and Beauty Parade. That man had a fetish about cleavage. Every model, no matter how big her boobies were, had to tape them together. He wanted that big line down the middle. For the Beaux Arts Ball he dreamed up a telephone outfit for me. I wore my black fishnet stockings and two little telephone dials over my boobies. And I had a suggestion box in the most strategic area, a little black box with a hole in it. I would never repeat some of the suggestions I got.

PLAYBOY: You were chosen Queen of the Ball. Your picture was in all the papers.
PAGE: I won a wonderful set of Revere Ware kitchenware. Seven hundred dollars' worth! Now it's almost 50 years later and I still use it.

PLAYBOY: Did you get dialed a lot?
PAGE: Some of the men tested the dials. Those phone dials on my breasts really worked.

PLAYBOY: It's been said you have the most-photographed breasts of all time.
PAGE: I never knew another girl with breasts like mine. Every month about a week before my period, my bust lost about two inches. My breasts got soft and flabby. Then a few days before my period and during it, they came back up and looked a lot better. It still bothers me that my breasts were down in my Playboy centerfold.

STEVENS: You protest too much.
PAGE: If Bunny Yeager [the photographer] had to send my picture to Playboy, she could have done it when my breasts looked better.

STEVENS: They looked fine.
PAGE: There's only one breast showing in the centerfold and it looks terrible. Do you know who followed me as Miss February? Jayne Mansfield. I was in high company.

PLAYBOY: Did you try to look enticing?
PAGE: Yes, of course. As a pin-up, that's what you do. I did it in a few movies, too.

PLAYBOY: You appeared in low-budget burlesque films with Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm.
PAGE: Tempest Storm was beautiful with her long, curly red hair. I played her maid in Teaserama. Or was it Varietease? Those wiggle movies were the same thing over and over. I just wiggled and mugged at the camera; I was no professional dancer. I was a good ballroom dancer, though.

PLAYBOY: With what partners?
PAGE: Men who asked me. I used to go to the Roseland Ballroom. It was full of beautiful colored lights. I would go alone; men would come over and ask me to dance.

PLAYBOY: Men have always wanted things from you.
PAGE: That's part of why I had a nervous breakdown.

PLAYBOY: Is it true that you were abducted on your first trip to New York?
PAGE: I was walking on Seventh Avenue, window-shopping, when a tall, nice-looking fellow asked me, "Do you dance?" I said I loved to dance. He took me to his car and we drove to the Queensborough Bridge. Then two other guys got in the car. Then two more. It dawned on me that we were not going dancing. They parked behind a high school in Queens. One of the creeps got out and ran off with his girlfriend. The others all forced me to perform oral sex on them. They warned me not to go to the police. That night I called Billy Neal in Nashville. We weren't married anymore, but he sent me money for a Greyhound bus ticket home.

PLAYBOY: Your marriage to Billy Neal had fallen apart. Yet you and Billy wed a second time in 1953, only to divorce again. You had two other marriages, two more divorces.
PAGE: My breakdown came after my divorce from Harry Lear in Florida in 1972. Harry's ex-wife was so jealous of me that it ruined the marriage and my health. Harry and I had a good marriage. He was a wonderful provider and a good lover. But he had one bad fault. He was a Mr. Milquetoast. He wouldn't stand up to his ex-wife, who kept calling at four in the morning to yell at me.

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