T   H   E

C   O   M   P   A   N   I   O   N

PART TWO

By Brendan Hancock
Edited by Matthew J Schelle

Originally Written for The Australian Rock & Roll Appreciation Society in 2005

PART TWO of EIGHT

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

"[Jerry Tibbs was] the one who got me wearing bangs. For years I had my hair parted down the middle in a ponytail, tucked down around the sides. But he said to me, 'Bettie, you've got a very high forehead. I think you'd look good if you cut some bangs to cover it.' Well, I went and cut the bangs, and I've been wearing them ever since. They say it's my trademark."

- Bettie Page

PART TWO

It was not long after creating the now famous Bettie Page “look” that police officer and part time photographer Jerry Tibbs started to get Bettie some much needed attention. Bettie, with her “free” Tibbs portfolio under her wing, started to be introduced to a number of well-known photographer friends from the area. Most of the modelling was often done in rented out studio spaces or in remote outdoor locations such as New York’s Fire Island. Even though Bettie would be usually half an hour late for every shoot, some say the time was spent on doing her hair, her lateness was always overlooked and her professionalism left intact due to her cheerful willingness to work nude and to strike almost any pose with a friendly smile.

 "I was never one who was squeamish about nudity. I don't believe in being promiscuous about it, but several times I thought of going to a nudist colony."

As it was Jerry Tibbs that did a lot of the introducing, one of the photographers Bettie met turned out to be Cass Carr, leader of a private club called the “Concord Camera Circle”. Carr, who was once a Jamaican big band leader, found his true calling in photography and set up a studio first at a Harlem Y.M.C.A and then at New York’s well-known West 47^th street. The concord camera circle was made up of Factory Managers, executives and college students. Only a few were actual professional photographers, but all of them were men.

Cass Carr would organise massive weekend photo trips that would include four or five models and up to sixty photographers. Due to an expensive price of $8 per person (normal studio admission was $4-$5), usually only middle class hobbyists and serious photographers would attend. The photographers would gather on the Sunday and take hour-long road trips to upstate New York, shooting several models at a time on location. The models would appear either together or separately. If the photography group were lucky enough to get a “name” model, such as Bettie Page, the price would conveniently go up to around $9-$10 per person.

A standard wage for Bettie herself would start at around $10 an hour indoors and around $25 an hour when shooting outdoors. It was these outdoor photographic sessions that Bettie found intensely enjoyable. Not only for the freedom of the outdoors but the money she made on the weekend allowed her to quit her secretarial job for good. As it stood, Page was making enough money to pay her monthly bills based on the weekend work alone. The modelling bug was finally paying off and soon Bettie Page craved it even more.

“ I would pose for two hours and make more than working all week as a secretary. I had plenty of free time to decorate my apartment. I had a nice little apartment with a small bedroom and living room, a small kitchenette, on 46th St., right close to Broadway, and all I paid was $46.29 a month. It was dilapidated. It was so cheap I could take off and go to my sister in Florida, or my brother in Nashville, keep my apartment and have somewhere to come back to. “

Due to the constant workload she purposefully put herself through, Bettie would often work overtime to fuel her career as well as sit up endless nights working on and sewing new bikinis and costumes for other upcoming photo shoots.

BLOCK SECTION ONE

Why did she do it?

Bettie felt absolutely comfortable being naked and was often described as a true exhibitionist. The question remains however, how could a woman in 1950’s society be so comfortable being nude and be able to break taboo after taboo?

Some say it was Bettie’s way of rebelling against her strict religious upbringing as a child. While others are more inclined to out the sexual abuse Bettie suffered, by not only her father, but by the sexual assault inflicted by a group of men that jumped Bettie in Queens, which was not long after she moved to New York.

It makes you think, when the notion of Bettie’s sex appeal could be rooted in her pathology; experts on sexual abuse say that some women actually do act this way after something like this happens. Victims of past assaults sometimes become sexually promiscuous or exhibitionistic in an effort to regain a sense of power and to reclaim control over their sexuality.

On one occasion with Cass Carr and his camera club, Bettie had a well-publicised run-in with the law. It was during one of the weekend photography club shoots at the South Salem Dairy in Westchester Country, that the entire group was placed in the back of the local police paddy wagon. The local police were preparing to charge Bettie and the group of photographers for making, of all things, pornography. The group in fact had been taking some outdoor nude shots of the models, which had been quite easily misinterpreted. The problem was that if everyone agreed to plead guilty, the police would reduce the charges to indecent exposure and disturbing the peace. But Bettie wouldn’t have it, and made her point very clear. Bettie refused to cooperate with the police due to the fact that she said one police officer in particular spied on her while she was relieving herself in the bushes. Bettie screamed at the arresting officers, shouting: “I am not indecent, I will not plead guilty to it! You’ll have to charge me with disturbing the peace, too!”. In the end, the local justice of the peace fined all involved five dollars and forced Carr and his photography group to sign an agreement stating that they would never shoot in Westchester County ever again.

Within months, word of mouth travelled fast and the girl from next door was being requested by camera clubs from all over town. Bettie Page’s modelling career had now well and truly taken off. Photographers, young and old, both professional and amateur, started seeking the black hair beauty out. The mix of local and out of state photographers became almost ravenous in their quest to photograph her. The camera clubs became packed out affairs when Bettie was posing and there were even a few that doubted the creditability of some of the “photographers” even having film in their cameras. But in any case, Bettie kept it very professional and no matter how cheap the settings, how bad the lighting was or how cold the ocean surf would be, Bettie put on a smile and came to life as soon as those camera shutters went clicking. In every pose, Bettie always looked like she enjoyed herself.

“I enjoyed it all. I had always known how to pose.  One year when my mother and father divorced, my two sisters and I were put into an orphanage, and in the orphanage my sisters and I would play a game called “program”. We would get movie star pictures from the newspaper and we would mimic the movie star poses. I guess that’s where I started learning how to pose. I just always knew what to do with my body”.

Many photographers described her as a true exhibitionist and with the 1950’s being the morality-laden era that they were Bettie was indeed ahead of her time. Bettie began to exploit that which was viewed as forbidden, but it’s fair to say that the attention did excite her and kept her going.

It was Bettie’s well-known professionalism and building popularity throughout the camera clubs that lead to one club photographer selling some Bettie photographs to magazine publisher Robert Harrison. Harrison quit his job as a newspaperman to build his own cheesecake-magazine empire throughout the 1940’s and 50s. His magazines would often be filled with busty women and always overflowing with cleavage. A fair amount of cleavage would be created with the aid of Harrison and his trusty scotch tape methods. So it was no surprise with magazine titles such as “Wink”, “Flirt”, “Beauty Parade”, “Titter” and “Eyeful” that the curvaceous Bettie Page would become a popular addition to the magazines and become a pinup star without comparison. Bettie would pose in elaborate “comic book” style photo stories such as “What the French maid saw” – in which French maid Bettie spies on another women through a keyhole and “Pretty Larceny”, which tells the tale of jailbird Bettie, dressed in a bikini, as she attempts to escape from a good looking female guard in hot pants.

Bettie enjoyed the experience posing for Harrison as she felt it allowed her to practice her acting skills. The ambition to become an actress was still inside of her and any chance to get experience would be an advantage. Yet, the only thing Bettie didn’t like about working with Harrison was his habit of “enhancing” his models breasts. Although Bettie’s breasts were smaller than most models of the day, she felt that they didn’t need the extra boost. Bettie felt not only was the duct tape most uncomfortable to wear (and painful to remove), she also felt that it always made her breasts look strange and artificial when profile shots were taken.

Bettie’s appearances in Robert Harrison’s magazines were officially the first time her name was been seen widely in print as a model, and it was also responsible for the misspelling of her name as Betty, which continued until the 1990’s. Bettie’s presence in the Robert Harrison magazine collections lead to Bettie being known as THE COVERGIRL, with everyone wanting a piece of her. Outtakes, from not only the Harrison photo shoots but also the camera club shoots, found their way onto other magazine covers, record album covers and matchbooks. By the mid 1950’s, topless images of Bettie from the Camera club photographers would find themselves in expensive magazines totally devoted to Page. Local commercial artists of the day would use the Bettie Page image as inspiration for figure drawing books, automobile advertisements as well as both cheap romance and true crime books at drug stores. Throughout the 1950’s, it was next to impossible to escape the image of Bettie Page, real or imitation.

As the hardest working and most popular model in New York, Bettie’s life became even more hectic when another camera club photographer decided to show a Page photograph to Irving Klaw, known throughout the land as “The Pin Up King”. Unbeknownst to Bettie at the time, Irving Klaw would come to introduce her to the underworld of Leather, Bondage and good old S&M and create the “Dark Angel” Bettie. This look is considered by many fans around the world as the quintessential image of what Bettie Page represented: naughty and nice, dominant and firm. The kitten with a whip.

Irving Klaw was a short, balding and chubby man who would always be dressed in a shirt and tie. Klaw once had a fur business in his late twenties but when it went bust decided to open up a struggling second hand bookstore in 1939, which was located in Manhattan.

Klaw’s partner in crime was his sister Paula, who was the complete opposite of her brother. She was tall and thin and wore her long brown hair in a pompadour style. The two were born and bread Brooklyners from a family of six other siblings. Learning from his previous business venture, Irving didn’t invest all of his money into the second hand bookstore. Instead, he also opened up a mail order magic trick business on the side. Yet still both businesses were failing to make any real money and Klaw was still desperate to try and make ends meet.

It was in 1941, just as Klaw was approaching thirty years of age, he stumbled over something that would change his life forever. As it happened, Klaw noticed that photographs were being ripped out of many of his movie magazines from his store’s newsstands. After eventually catching the kids in the act, he realised that instead of moving the magazines to the front of the store to combat the vandalism of his stock, it would be better to capitalise on it. He knew that the kids wanted movie posters and images of their favourite movie stars. Klaw went out of his way to order and track down movie stills and surplus movie lobby cards from the big movie studios. Klaw’s investment paid off and paying customers quickly bombarded his business.

Klaw was amazed by how quickly the movie stills would sell and quickly expanded his shopfront to cater for the popularity. It wasn’t long before the shop was nothing more than continual rows of filing cabinets filled with stills and posters. The Klaw’s stopped selling the magazines and changed their name to MOVIE STAR NEWS. Giving up on the magic mail order business, Klaw began to push his movie posters and stills through the mail instead.

During World War II, Irving Klaw pushed his international mail-order business, which primarily aimed to provide cheesecake photos of movie stars like Rita Haywood and Betty Gable to servicemen stationed overseas. Klaw would average around three hundred orders per day. Yet instead of the normal cheesecake photos, Klaw started getting requests for images that became just too common to be labelled as “unusual”. It was some of Klaw’s best customers, the lawyers and other high class businessmen who started to request images of situations such as “damsel in distress”, where bound and gagged actresses would be getting spanked by other girls. Although Klaw would always do his best to please all of his clientele, his problem was that no Hollywood movie had or would feature anything like that. So with the persistence and funding from some of his good customers, Irving Klaw went into the photography business.

It seemed that Klaw had finally gotten away from the false starts of his previous business ventures and was at a stage that he could be set for life. He basically had the monopoly on the movie star picture trade due mainly because he was the first to do so. The only difference now was that Klaw and his sister Paula would also have the ability to create photos, posters and prints to order and by request. The main problem was to get some models willing to do it, as Klaw needed women who were willing to get tied up, gagged or be thrown into whatever kinky and taboo scenario that would be requested by his customers. Although Klaw stipulated no nudity (pornography was regarded as a no-no), he couldn’t just put an advertisement in a 1950’s newspaper and not expect some sort of trouble and unwanted attention. Klaw had to rely heavily on word of mouth in order to get his models, and with each new model he would ask them to keep an eye out for a friend or someone else who may be interested in modelling. This is how Bettie was brought to his attention.

Bettie met with Irving and Paula Klaw and the three hit it off. Irving found a real gem of a model in Bettie and quickly signed her up as one of his movie star news models. He was so enthusiastic with the first lot of images taken of Page in 1952 that he quickly used one of them for the cover of the magazine “Cartoon and Model Parade”, even though they didn’t actually have any photos pf Bettie available for sale at the time.

The Klaw studios provided most of the fetish outfits that Bettie would wear for the photo shoots. These included the extreme high heels, lots of leather and lots of rope. Bettie also modelled a metal cone bra that would no doubt later inspire Madonna and her famous “cone bras”. Some of the actual lingerie that was used in a lot of the shots was from Frederick’s of Hollywood. As the requests kept flooding in, Bettie and Irving would do their best to fulfil each one.

“ I was always trying to see how many poses I could think of. We would sort of laugh sometimes at the bondage. Irving Klaw was the only one I posed for using whips and things. Men used to write into Irving and tell them explicitly what they wanted me in. One man wanted me in a pony outfit, down on all fours. There was a leather outfit to cover me from head to foot.”

Business was booming: Klaw sold 4x5 black and white bondage and S&M photos for 40cents each (a lot of money just for one photo) and sets of eight photos for $2.00. In comparison, the normal cheesecake photos of girls in bikini’s and lingerie were only 15 cents each. Being the business man that he was, Klaw not only sold 4x5 cheesecake slides but also stocked the high-tech “3D colour stereo slides” which were quiet expensive at $1.50 each. This way the viewer (using the equally high-tech) stereo viewer could experience the lovely Bettie Page in glorious three dimensions. These viewers were nothing more than a sophisticated version of the children’s viewmaster system, but they sold and sold well. Klaw also expended into the home movie market and while shooting stills with his models a movie camera captured the action also. Bettie’s home movie shoots for the Klaw’s included striptease and lingerie dancing which can be seen in such films as “Pretty Betty Dances Again”, “Betty’s Fireplace Dance” and “Dominant Betty Dances With Whip”. Little did people know at the time but there was no music for Betty to dance to when filming, all that was overdubbed in later and surprisingly matches up in sync with Bettie’s dance steps. The more kinky and sometimes creepier requests on film included “Hobbled in Kid Leather Harness” and “Jungle Girl Tied To Trees” which featured Bettie in her Leopard skin bikini being tied in between two trees while another model dressed in leathers whips her from behind with a bullwhip. One of the most bizarre request for Bettie was called ‘Betty’s Clown Dance Parts 1 & 2” in which she dances very seductively with a stuffed clown. Yet with all these sometimes strange requests, images of Bettie spread-eagled, gagged, bound, and strung up by roped and pulleys were always the best sellers and most popular. It was this willingness to do these sort of photo shoots and the good girl gone bad feel to the images portrayed that lead her to become known as “The Dark Angel”

BLOCK SECTION TWO
(Perhaps include an image of Bettie tied up)

Bettie & Little John

One of the most well known of Klaw’s customers who were seeking something “special” in his photo requests and who introduced both Irving and Paula Klaw into the world of Bondage and S&M was a wealthy patron, a lawyer who went under the pseudonym “Little John”. Little John was a small, chubby faced man, who was considered nice and kind, a real friendly man. This innocent looking man was also a lover of all things S&M and was soon helping Irving finance the first lot of shoots of women being tied up and gagged. At the request of the Klaw’s, he was also the technical advisor and directed the girls on how to do their job.

Paula Klaw once said of Little John, “John was allowed to be present at the photo shoot sessions and to direct, but he wasn’t permitted to touch the girls, so they got me to do the actual rope tricks. Bettie never objected to anything she was asked to do, but I don’t think that they were necessarily things she would have done if she hadn’t needed the money”. Despite the rules in place, both the Klaw’s and the models loved Little John for his kindness and respect towards them as both performers and as ladies. Like most of the models, Bettie developed a friendship with Little John.

It was a very sad day for Bettie, the Klaw’s and other women working at Movie Star News Pictures when “Little John” died. The poor man’s fate was gruesomely sealed during Little John’s commercial transaction with a drunken prostitute.  Little John was tied to a chair with a lit cigarette in his mouth. The drunken prostituted collapsed from her intoxication leaving Little John to burn to death.  It was Little John’s death that may have been responsible for taking some of the shine and fun away from the lifestyle Bettie was getting so deeply involved in, and may have been one of the many reasons for her eventually leaving the modelling business.

Bettie and the Klaw’s became good friends. In time, the Klaw’s liked Bettie so much that Bettie was virtually the only model that they would see socially, usually going out after long photo shoots to restaurants with the rest of the Klaw family. The only complaint Paula Klaw had with Bettie was that Bettie would take up to an hour to brush her hair. In describing Bettie, Paula said that “I love her and I know her, she is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met: congenial, beautiful body, one of the best models we ever had… (Bettie) was just a plain country girl”.

Eventually with all the money coming in, Irving financed all the costs for producing the short film “loops” and other production costs without the need for the customers to help out with the funding. He became the sole store manager of Movie Star News while his sister took over the modelling side of the business. After learning all the technical aspects of photography from previously hired photographers, Paula gradually became a very skilled photographer in her own right. Her experience came from shooting thousands of cheesecake photos with a high a speed 4x5 camera set-up and the many short films using a 16mm Bolex movie camera.

Paula had no problem filling out her customer’s requests, even the strange, weird and kinky ones. As long as no one got hurt, it didn’t bother her, she actually didn’t care. At the end of the day, she had to laugh at what she was doing. It was Paula who tied the models up for the bondage shoots; as the customers who taught Paula the fundamentals of rope tying were  “kind of afraid of the women” to do it for her.

Most of the shoots where done on Saturdays, with most models working around six hours per shoot and be set to make $50 for the days work. Paula would try to shoot approximately three hundred photos and fit in at least one film loop.

One of Paula’s films was a wrestling loop that teamed Bettie up with another of Klaw’s most popular models, a red haired beauty by the name of June King. It was this shoot that saw Bettie actually get seriously hurt. During the filming on a Friday night, King landed right on top of Bettie’s knee with a loud cracking sound. In absolute pain and bleeding from a cut caused by King’s sharp stiletto high heal, Bettie found herself unable to extend her leg.

After getting home and finding it near impossible to get up the stairs of her third floor apartment and into bed, she found her leg was stuck in a bent position and soon after, a doctor scheduled an operation at a nearby hospital for the following Monday morning.

Yet in an interview that would be featured in an issue of “The Betty Pages”, Bettie told about how sometime during the weekend as she was lying on her bed with nothing to do except deal with the pain, a deep loud voice from inside her head cried out to her: “Bettie, you can straighten your leg”. Sure enough, without any real effort, Bettie was able to straighten her leg without any sign of pain. A mixture of shock and awe came over her, leaving her convinced that it had been the Lord who had spoken to her and healed her. The experience not only left Bettie free of her operation on that Monday morning, but with a reaffirmation of her childhood faith. From that moment on, most Sunday mornings you would find a tired and weary “kitten with a whip” at her local church.

In 1952, Bettie took a vacation from her ever-growing modelling career in New York to escape to sunny Miami, where she found herself modelling again. Moving from the dark settings often featured at the Klaw’s photo shoots and the cramped conditions of the New York apartments and now into the sunny Florida outdoors. No sooner had Bettie’s feet touched the sand of Miami Beach that a television-casting director spotted her and asked her to act in a cigarette commercial. With no casting lounge in sight, Bettie jumped at the chance to be on TV. Bettie’s part in the advertisement was to look sexy for thirty seconds in front of a cheap, painted background while the commercial’s leading man gave her the once over asking: “How did they get so much into one little package?”. Even though her acting ability wasn’t being tested seriously, Bettie was overjoyed. She was not only going to be on TV in glorious black and white, she didn’t have to go to New York to do it.

With a spring in her step, Bettie was soon listed with a Miami modelling agency and soon Florida’s most well known Pin Up photographers were seeking Bettie out.

It wasn’t long before Bettie would be frequently posing for photographers such as Jan Caldwell, Hans W Hannau and Benno Correa. Most of the images taken from the shoots would become postcards that are still around today. One of the most famous postcards involved an image taken by Hannau, where a smiling Bettie Page looks seductively at the camera while a stuffed alligator attempts to make off with her briefs. What must have been a great advertising campaign for Florida, the postcard read, “WOW! We alligators do have fun in Florida!”. Bettie returned to New York, revitalised, rejuvenated and more determined than ever to become an actress.

Although by 1953 she was regarded as one of the hottest pinup models around, Bettie still saw herself as an actress. Using a lot of the money earned from her modelling jobs, Bettie auditioned for an apprenticeship at Sea Cliff Summer Theatre in Long Island where she studied acting under the tutelage of Herbert Berghoff. She made friends with actor Robert Culp who would later star with Bill Cosby in the TV series “I SPY”. Culp taught some of Bettie’s drama classes and attended other classes with her. He went on to act along side her in a one-act play called “THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS”. Bettie spent many hours practicing her lines and delivery whilst struggling to ditch her very thick Tennessee drawl. In time, she realised that her thick accent wouldn’t be the only thing stopping her from landing the sought after film and television roles. Because Bettie’s standards were so high, Bettie was known throughout the clubs as a straight shooter, she never smoked, drank or took drugs, and the notion of visiting the casting couch with a producer in order to get an acting role would be definitely out of the question. Although the rumour of Bettie having a brick in her handbag stopped many from asking, some of the more game photographers seeking Bettie’s attention would fight over her just to ask her out. Bettie would never date them, only because she didn’t find any of them attractive.

It was with Berghoff’s encouragement that Bettie was able to secure several acting roles in various New York productions. These included off-Broadway productions “TIME IS A THIEF” and “SUNDAY COSTS FIVE PESOS”. Bettie’s biggest television spot was a small performance on the Jackie Gleason Show. Although the acting was a positive experience, off camera Bettie found Gleason an overbearing despot who verbally abused his crew.

Bettie had contacted the William Morris Agency looking for representation and was taken under their wing as a “pocket client”, which was basically meant an actor or actress who showed some promise and potential but not enough for the agency to commit to a full-fledged contract. Bettie’s agent, Hillard Elkins, sent her to some auditions, which usually ended up with Bettie wrestling with her morals and the casting couch. During a meeting with a film producer from Columbia Pictures, who was auditioning for a western that was to be filmed in South Dakota, he told her, if she was “nice” to him then the role would be hers. But no matter how hard she tried, Bettie not only didn’t find the guy attractive, she felt sick every time he tried to touch her.

For all the casting directors who weren’t interested in getting Bettie into bed with them, her heavy country accent wasn’t helping. The problem with most was Bettie had a presence, Elkin’s, her agent said, “Lets be real, she could wear a f**king sheet and look sexy”, but as soon as she opened her mouth, a lot of that extra punch was ruined by the country girl twang.

Yet it was 1953 that marked Bettie’s first major acting job on film, though it still wasn’t the type of role Bettie had always dreamed of. Bettie was hired by New York theatre operator and part time film producer Martin Lewis to act in a short bathtub scene in his B-movie burlesque revue called “STRIP-O-RAMA”. The film featured elaborate strip routines including one particular scene where well-trained pigeons actually made off with one stripers clothes.

Not surprisingly the film was a box office success making around $80,000 within nine weeks of release. Irving Klaw, part impressed and part worried that someone was going to steal his thunder decided to branch out into the real movie making business. Although he had already produced and released a lot of successful 8mm and 16mm short film loops of Bettie that he sold through his catalogues, he realised he had to think bigger.

Klaw went on to release the feature films “Varietease” in 1954 and “Teaserama” in 1955. Both productions were shot in colour and starred Bettie. In “Varietease”, Bettie wore a sequined harem girl’s outfit while dancing her own sexy version of the “Dance Of The Seven Veils”. In “Teaserama”, she stripped down to her black silk underwear and stockings. Irving Klaw’s productions also showcased a variety of other burlesque talent, including world famous strippers such as Lili St. Cyr (billed as the most beautiful woman in the world), Tempest Storm and female impersonator Vickie Lynn.

Although at the time, both the Klaw and Lewis produced feature films, with their big-chested, scantly clad women parading around in their underwear, were hot stuff at the time and considered pornography by many, by today’s standards, the films would be lucky to go past PG and would most likely be seen in museums or film exhibitions.

By the spring of 1954, Bettie felt she was ready to return to sunny Florida for another “vacation”.

As soon as Bettie was in Florida, she re-listed with the local modelling agency. One of the first people to meet up with Bettie was newspaper columnist Herb Rau, who in turn introduced her to photographer Bunny Yeager. The tall blond taught a modelling course at the agency and was once herself a successful model in her own right. But instead of being in front of the camera she found a greater love for being behind it. Bunny already had some small successes photographing friends for nudes and cheesecake shots that had been featured in magazines such as Chicks and Chuckles.

After quickly noticing something special with this girl named Bettie Page, Bunny spent virtually most of Bettie’s month long stay in Miami as her primary photographer. It was Yeager who would feature Bettie at the beach and outdoors and it was her photographs that would capture the free spirited Bettie Page at her very best, her beauty in it’s most natural state and a woman truly happy to be alive, as free as a bird.

At first Bettie posed for Bunny with the black nylons, stiletto heels, and leather gear from her work with the Klaw’s in New York. But it was Bunny who introduced Bettie to pose in furs, stockings, see through negligee by candlelight and evil donning a devil costume.

Yeager would later say in an interview that: ” We had a very good relationship. I still believe she was the best pinup glamour model that ever lived; I was so lucky in my beginning days of learning to be a photographer that Bettie came along. We made a good team. She seemed to know just what I wanted. Outdoor sessions were fun for both of us.”

Bunny just couldn’t get enough of her new model, “I was impressed by her professionalism as a model. Every hair in place, but natural looking, makeup well done but not too much. Perfect tanned skin, healthy hair. Creative in her posing and her facial expressions, exuberant”.

Bunny would be the one who lugged her elaborate lighting set-up from beach to park for her photo shoots with Bettie, who would often be dragging Bunny’s two cameras, extension cords. Bunny would usually use up to four floodlights to give Bettie’s skin a perfect creamy air brushed look. Bunny Yeager acquired Bettie for a photo session at the USA Africa Wildlife Park in Boca Raton, Florida. The photos taken from the shoot would become some of the most celebrated and sort after of all the Bettie Page images. The shoot marked the beginning of her well known ‘Jungle Girl’ series of photos where, using all her past sewing experience, wore her now famous leopard skin patterned outfit that she sewed herself. It was this Yeager photo shoot that also included the nude shots of Page with a pair of cheetahs.

Another famous photo shoot to produce an equally famous image was actually more of a light-hearted, semi-unplanned affair. Bunny decided to get Bettie to pose naked wearing only a Santa’s hat and a smile. Bettie gave a wink to the camera while hanging an ornament on a miniature Christmas tree. The photo was sent off to a well known men’s magazine fetching Bunny Yeager $100 and Bettie $20, although at the time, being with Yeager was nothing short of a positive experience and the money wasn’t an issue. In later years, Page would have a different attitude towards her photographer “friend” Bunny Yeager.

"Bunny Yeager is the stingiest woman God ever placed on the face of this earth. When I started posing for her, she had been a pin up model herself. I posed for 2 - 3 hours at a stretch, I posed for nothing. She said she would pay me when the photos sold, but I never saw a penny. She has sold books, bought a house and she wouldn't even give me one free picture for my book. She said "Bettie Page has to pay for them like everybody else!"

Bunny Yeager and her camera captured a woman who was very comfortable with her body and also with who she was. While Yeager, the photographer has made a lot of money from her collection of photographs, her most famous subject and friend, Bettie Page, would never see a cent.  Although Bunny Yeager benefited financially from selling the image of her in the Santa hat to Hugh Heffner and his Playboy magazine, it would be Bettie who would receive something more rewarding. If there was still a red blooded man alive in the United States that hadn’t come across a sexy image of Bettie Page from all of her exposure thus far, then Hugh Heffner’s playboy magazine would change all that.

BLOCK SECTION THREE

(use attached image of Weegee here please)

BETTIE and WEGEE

Bettie’s regular clientele of photographers ranged from amateurs to well known professional shutterbugs, one of which was Arthur Fellig, more popularly known as the hardboiled freelance crime photographer “Weegee”. Weegee adopted the nickname from the popular Ouija fortune telling game, as he possessed the uncanny ability to show up at the right time and place and therefore get the best crime-scene pictures. Almost psychic in his timing, in truth he slept in his car with a police radio by his side, a typewriter in his trunk and a camera around his neck. When shots rang out, he was usually on the scene the same time as police. Weegee became very well known for his stark and sarcastic crime photos of New York City street life that soon, both the New York police and the Mob would call to tip him off. There is the story of when, after such a tip off, Weegee got to the crime scene while a couple of unlucky criminals were still dying. Being the professional that he was, Weegee took their pictures and then called the cops.

Weegee once wrote, “I am often asked what kind of candid camera I used, there really is no such thing. It’s the photographer who must be candid.” 

Due to his popularity, Weegee began to branch out from his crime scene photos to more high society affairs. Weegee would often be seen with famous faces such as Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, who both enjoyed his work immensely. Through the word of camera clubs, Weegee met up with Bettie where he took hundreds of photos of her and palled around her frequently.

Perhaps with his notoriety came a lot of confidence. It was this confidence that unfortunately lead to Weegee, a short, stocky built man, who may have been a bit street tough, to experience the wrath of Bettie Page. While taking nude photos of Bettie in her apartment bathtub, Weegee felt in order to get a “better shot”, decided to take all of his clothes off and climb into the sudd filled water with her.

Sadly for him, Bettie screamed him out of the room.

Weegee died of a brain tumour on December 26, 1968, He is credited with ushering in the age of tabloid culture, while at the same time being revered for elevating the sordid side of human life to that of high art.

As soon as she was back in New York City, Bettie pursued her acting career further. Her persistence and determination lead to her getting some bit parts on the New York stage; she played a hooker in Camino Real by Tennessee Williams and had small role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was around this time Bettie began dating Martin Greene, a fellow acting student from the Herbert Berghof studios. Greene’s goal in life was to become a director but for the time being, fell deeply in love with Bettie. Bettie and Martin would go on to have a three-year romance, which was made up of camping trips to Canada, upstate New York, visits to New England, as well as the beautiful Nova Scotia. There aren’t many details known about Greene. Some say he may have been a short blonde man who was often moody, perhaps on account of his insecurities about his height. Their relationship was indeed a serious one, but would take second fiddle to Bettie’s busy schedule.

PART TWO of EIGHT

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