PLAYBOY: In his book The Real Bettie Page, Virginia journalist Richard Foster tells some lurid stories about you.
PAGE: Richard Foster is the devil posing as a human. A monster. He wants to make money, and he doesn't care what he does to my reputation.

PLAYBOY: Foster writes that you stabbed three people before being committed to a mental hospital.
PAGE: That book was full of lies.

PLAYBOY: Foster writes that you once held a knife to Harry Lear and his three children and forced them to pray. He says you threatened to "cut their guts out."
PAGE: That is absurd. I wouldn't do something like that. [Editor's note: Contacted by phone, Harry Lear corroborated Foster's account. Lear voiced doubts about other charges in the book, however. "I don't like that guy Foster. He told me he would do almost anything for money," Lear said.]

PLAYBOY: Bettie, Harry Lear tells us the story is true. He says you made him and the children pray to a painting of Jesus, a painting by an artist named Sallman.
PAGE: We did have a picture like that. I don't know, maybe I was out of my head. I don't remember doing it.

PLAYBOY: Harry called the police on you that night. You spent four months in a Florida hospital.
PAGE: Harry didn't know what to do. He fixed me something to eat, then he said something I didn't like and I threw a plate at him. That's when he called the police. He knew it was hopeless; I was having a nervous breakdown. I was sent to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where I had to take Thorazine. Terrible stuff. You feel dizzy and frightened. You feel like your head is going to come off.

PLAYBOY: How did your breakdown start?
PAGE: I heard voices. I heard God and the angels talking to me, talking about fighting the demons in me. They talked out loud with my voice. That scared poor Harry. Of course, in the state I was in, I thought it was perfectly normal to talk to angels.

PLAYBOY: Were you religious?
PAGE: I was born again on New Year's Eve, 1959. By then I was married to Armond Walterson of Key West. The one before Harry. That was stupid on my part. I met him when I was 30 and he was 18, and all he cared for was sex, movies and hamburgers. The man was a hamburger fiend.

PLAYBOY: Was he born again?
PAGE: No, he was out drinking with the boys. I got restless and went for a walk. And it was as if someone had taken me by the hand and led me to a little church on White Street with a white neon cross on top. The door was open. I could hear singing. I went in and heard the preacher's salvation message. I stood there and cried because of my sins.

PLAYBOY: What sins?
PAGE: Because I had a lot of sex in my life. I even shoplifted a couple times at Peabody College in Nashville. The cadets on campus admired my looks; they dubbed me the Duchess and they would cross their swords over my head when I went to class. I was ashamed I didn't have anything pretty to wear, so I swiped two dresses from Harvey's Department Store. But it was more than shoplifting. When I gave my life to the Lord I began to think he disapproved of all those nude pictures of me.

PLAYBOY: What did your husband think of your conversion?
PAGE: Armond didn't want to be led to the Lord. All he wanted was hamburgers and sex. And I had to teach him about sex. I don't think he'd ever had sex with a woman before me.

PLAYBOY: Were you a good teacher?
PAGE: I remember our first kiss. We were at a drive-in movie. Armond kissed me, but he really didn't know how. He barely touched his lips to mine. After that I showed him the ropes. He became a good lover.

PLAYBOY: Did religion change your life?
PAGE: I put my other life behind me. I threw all my bikinis in the garbage can. I threw out all my stockings and lingerie and panties and lace bras. And I went to Bible school. First the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, then the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and the Multnomah School of the Bible in Oregon. Did street witnessing and visited jails. I helped with church services at a home for teenage mothers, poor little 13-year-old girls with great big bellies. I led a few of them to the Lord.

PLAYBOY: Did you ever want children of your own?
PAGE: I couldn't have any. I always wanted to, but I couldn't get pregnant. Doctors said I had a hormone imbalance.

PLAYBOY: Tell us about Bible Town, where you studied in Florida.
PAGE: I had a breakdown there. I was in the auditorium when God seemed to talk to me. I guess I was cursing out loud, cursing Christians for not witnessing. Someone called the police. This new book by Foster says Bettie Page threatened people with a .22 at Bible Town. That is a lie. I did have a .22 for protection, but whatever Foster has heard from the police, it never left my dresser drawer.

PLAYBOY: You had other run-ins with police.
PAGE: The worst ones had to do with two long-nosed busybodies, my good-for-nothing landladies. I left Florida on October 9, 1978 and went to live in a little cottage in Lawndale, California. It's a nothing town, but I had a nice little place, painted white. Unfortunately, my landlady got it into her mind that I had a man in there. She would cup her hands over her eyes and peek through my window. I'd be walking around naked or in my panties, and I'd feel somebody watching me. I would look around and see her face against the window. One day I was peeling potatoes when I saw her peeking in. I went to the door, and I guess I was waving the knife, shouting, "Leave me alone or I'll call the police!" Well, her husband came out of the garage and busted me over the head with a hammer. My blood was all over the place. I thought he had killed me. Then they lied in court. I wasn't allowed to speak. I tried to say they were lying. The judge kept saying he would cite me for contempt of court if I said another word.

PLAYBOY: What did you want to say?
PAGE: That I had no intention of cutting anybody with a knife. I am a peaceful person. Yes, I was depressed. My money was dwindling. I had tried to get secretarial jobs but was always turned down. I was overqualified. Or too old. I could type 75 words per minute and take shorthand at 120 words per minute, but I was too old. I got depressed and had relapses.

PLAYBOY: You were hospitalized again.
PAGE: They said I was schizophrenic. Acute schizophrenia.

PLAYBOY: How long were you at Patton State Hospital?
PAGE: Twenty months. Patton is in San Bernardino, California, you know. It's pretty there. You can see the mountains from your window. I didn't feel like a prisoner at Patton. The grounds are lovely, full of orange and grapefruit and lemon trees. You were allowed to eat as many as you wanted. I had a job in the hospital offices. I was a secretary again. But one night I was back in the dorm when a big young woman, the girl who sat across from me in the cafeteria, attacked me and tried to choke me to death. It was a case of mistaken identity. She thought I was someone from her life. A guard finally pulled her away.

PLAYBOY: How often did you think about your former life as a pin-up girl?
PAGE: One night my picture came on the TV in the hospital. I couldn't hear anything, the women were all yakking. But seeing myself on TV -- it brought back old times. Happier times.

PLAYBOY: There would soon be more troubles.
PAGE: Yes. Another relapse. After Patton State I rented a room from a woman who was worse than my other landlady. She would follow me around the house, bust into my room when I was dressing or undressing. Since I couldn't get a job I depended on Social Security, which was $450 a month. But the government needed verification of my rent, or it would cut off my S.S.I. I needed rent receipts from the landlady, but she wouldn't give them to me. I had no place else to live -- I went into her room when she was sleeping and straddled her and threatened her: "Give me my rent receipts." I had a knife in my hand. We fought, and she hit me on the head with an antique telephone.

PLAYBOY: You wound up in court again.
PAGE: The judge would not let me speak. I did not assault that woman. I was depressed and angry and I threatened her with a knife, but I wouldn't have done anything. I wasn't that sick. I might have cut her if she hadn't given me the rent receipts, but I would not have killed her. I never had that feeling even when I was mentally sick, but now it's on my record: assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder. The court said I was not guilty by reason of insanity.

PLAYBOY: Was the court right?
PAGE: I wasn't insane. I had no intention of cutting that woman, for goodness sake, but I was held by the state for eight long years. I was released a few years ago. Now I live in a little house next door to my mental health center. Once a year I go to downtown Los Angeles to see a psychiatrist. That would be a one-hour drive, but it takes three hours on the bus. My psychiatrist says I'm doing well. She tells me to avoid stress. I don't want to relapse.

PLAYBOY: Do you have financial troubles?
PAGE: All the attention I have been getting lately helps my morale more than my pocketbook. I had a louse of an agent, James Swanson, who published my life story, Bettie Page: The Life of a Pinup Legend.

PLAYBOY: What about movie rights?
PAGE: People talk about a movie, but I don't think it will happen. My popularity was only at the cult level. My life isn't interesting enough for a big-time movie.

PLAYBOY: Will you ever appear in public again?
PAGE: No. I want people to remember me as I was.

PLAYBOY: Do you reminisce?
PAGE: I think about being young. I never thought I would get old. Then I started seeing gray hairs and lines around my eyes and my mouth. I thought, Oh no, I'm old. I'm 50. Now I think, Oh, to be 50 again! But I have decided to live to be 100. I'm into antiaging -- I take vitamins, minerals and umpteen supplements and have more energy than ever.

PLAYBOY: One critic wrote that your appeal came from low self-esteem. You tried so hard to please the camera, he said.
PAGE: What's low about that? To please the camera -- isn't that a good thing?

PLAYBOY: Do you regret anything?
PAGE: I am sorry for the trouble I had with Harry Lear and his ex-wife and their children. I'm sorry that this book has come out and that my fans, people who have been admirers of mine for years, have to read about my troubles.

PLAYBOY: Do you have a message for your fans?
PAGE: Yes. I never got to tell them: Thank you.

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