T H
E
C O M P A N I O N
PART
SIX
By Brendan Hancock
Edited by Matthew J Schelle
Originally Written for The Australian Rock & Roll Appreciation Society in 2005
PART SIX of
EIGHT
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Seemingly rejuvenated by the Florida sun and it’s locations, Bettie was well on her way of being her old self. Her past in Nashville, her modelling career and even religion had become a secondary priority with her new love Harry Lear the major.
Within 6 months after their meeting at the Palace Ballroom, Bettie and Harry were married, she would be officially known as Bettie Page Lear. She and Harry moved iNto a three-bedroom suburban ranch house in Hialeah and now that they were married, Harry decided he would seek out shared custody of his three children from the previous marriage.
Bettie was excited about the idea of having an instant family, she had
always wanted her own children and here she thought God have given her
to chance to do good on it. For Harry, it felt like things were looking
up for him again, a new home, a beautiful new wife and soon he would
have his children.
Married life was working out well for both Bettie and Harry. He’s three children, 2 boys (11 and 9) and one girl (7) would spend a lot of time together. But soon trouble was slowly raising it’s ugly head.
At first the arguments were about minor things, but due to the increasing tension caused by Harry’s ex-wife, the children had a very hard time accepting Bettie as a mother figure.
“I couldn’t have children, yet I wanted to have a family. I was very fond of these three children, but they wouldn’t accept me as a mother substitute, the wanted to live with their Mother and Father”
The new family went on numerous outings including a trip to Disneyland. The bonding sessions were in vain as the children’s acceptance of Bettie was offset and doomed to fail because of her over- the- top strict discipline and the religion that was slowly creeping back into her lifestyle. Bettie would demand that the children would pray before each meal and keep their rooms perfectly clean.
Bettie would begin to put pictures of Jesus up all over the Lear house, prayed every chance she got and with Bettie’s urging, the family attended church three times a week.
After another big family summer trip in 1969, where the family travelled up the east coast to Canada, Bettie’s behaviour became increasingly erratic and bizarre. It has been written that Bettie would stay up all night in the backyard gardening, she would verbally attack the children of which Harry would have to defend them and left the relationship as a whole slowly deteriorating. The strange behaviour got to the point where she openly talked about her strange ideas about Christianity, including that there was not one but seven gods and that she herself was a prophet.
By 1971 Harry was ready to concede that Bettie was mentally ill, and that the marriage was over. In October Bettie left Harry seeking the only thing she knew she could turn to, her religion. Bettie moved to a small conference motel, which was located at Bible Town Community Church in Boca Raton near the Florida Coast.
Harry filed for divorced in December of 1971, on the grounds of separation and irreconcilable differences. By January 17th 1972 the divorce was granted, but Bettie didn’t take it too well. One evening in January a staff manager rushed into the Bible Town’s business manager’s office yelling that a woman was running around with a gun at the motel” and sure enough it was Bettie. Waving a 0.22 calibre pistol, a gift from Harry to use for protection. Bettie ran around the motel complex shouting about the retribution of God.
Harry got a call from Boca Raton police, explained his way out of any serious charges, packed Bettie’s belongings and invited her to stay back at his house Hialeah.
Bettie accepted and stayed in Linda’s bedroom until the summer when Harry decided to build an extra bedroom on the back of the house. But the uncontrollable outburst and violent behaviour only got worse. Bettie was arrested on the 28th October 1972 when Police answered a call placed by Harry, when they arrived on scene that found him and Bettie out on the front yard with Bettie hitting Harry, repeatedly punching and verbally attacking him.
Bettie would stay at Jackson Memorial hospital, a state mental care facility for six months spending most of the time under suicide watch. Harry would come and visit her regularly reassuring her that there would be a place for her to come back to if she wanted it. When she finally left the hospital she left a changed woman, she took up Harry’s offer and moved back in.
“After the divorce, I stayed on at Harry’s house at Haileah for another Seven years doing the cleaning and taking care of the yard”
Harry and Bettie remained friendly with Bettie accepting that they were no longer husband and wife but more like landlord and tenant. By 1978, at the age of fifty- five, Bettie’s alimony from Harry had dried up although Harry would often help her out financially. Harry wanted to retire and move away from Florida and decided he would move to South Carolina. This left Bettie no place to live. Bettie’s brother Jimmy who had just recently divorced and needed the company was once again there to help. Bettie moved back in with jimmy in his suburban Californian home near Santa Monica. There she lived for the next nine years. Yet some sources say this may not be the case and could be seen as a cover-up.
In the
book “The Real Bettie Page”, author Richard foster explains that
throughout the following nine years Bettie actually moved into a caravan
owned by an elderly couple about a year after moving in with Jimmy. And
on the night of April 19th 1979 she stabbed her elderly
landlords for no apparent reason. The police reports described her as
mentally unstable and the following court ruling on the 22nd
May 1980 found her not guilty by reason of insanity.
Believing that Bettie had not fully recovered from the last round of treatment given to her at Jackson memorial the court committed her to Patton state hospital on the 24th July and sentenced her for five years incarceration and treatment.
Yet by February 1982 on the recommendations of her doctor, Bettie was
released from Patton state and began a new outpatients treatment
program, within four months it is written that Bettie committed a
vicious stabbing that put her on trial for attempted murder. Her victim
was Leonie Haddad an elderly woman whom Bettie shared a house with.
Leonie was left with a severed finger, and major cuts all over her body
and Bettie went to court. Bettie was ruled insane and a danger to
others, she was carried away kicking and screaming and sentenced to ten
years at Patton State Hospital.
It was at Patton state that doctors diagnosed her as having “schizophrenia, paranoid type chronic”. Bettie tried hard to overcome her illness and the battle took several years. In 1992 her sentence was up and Bettie began to be treated on an outpatient basis and by this time the violence from her past had finally left her. At the age of sixty-nine with ten years of it being locked up in the mental institution, Bettie sought the help from her family and the church to try and make the most of the rest of her life and get it on track.
Bettie moved into a Baptist home and made ends meet from her social security money. In an interview with the author Richard Foster, Bettie hints that these events did happen with the comment:
“I wish I could erase the years from 1979 to 1992…(but now) I am in very good health for which I am very grateful..”
Ironically, Bettie, who spent much of her life struggling with the problems that her sexual attractiveness seemed to bring; is now an inspiration to many, especially to women all over the world. Bettie is seen to have helped make them feel more comfortable with their own sexuality. She is a living icon; Bettie now has a new lease on life from her growing cult status as a pinup legend, a phenomenon of which she was only marginally aware of during her lost years in limbo.
PART SIX of
EIGHT
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