Alex Henderson

The Bettie Page Revival

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, May 25, 2006


April marked two major events in the life of 1950s erotica queen Bettie Page. On April 22, the 1950s pinup model/burlesque star celebrated her 83rd birthday, and April 14 was the U.S. release of "The Notorious Bettie Page," a 91-minute mainstream film starring actress Gretchen Mol as Page and directed and co-written by Canadian director Mary Harron of "I Shot Andy Warhol" fame.

"The Notorious Bettie Page" comes at a time when Page's popularity and influence are at an all-time high. Page retired from modeling 49 years ago, but the demand for her 1950s photos and short films has never been greater. From the many documentaries, books, websites and songs that Page has inspired to a long list of fetish models and professional dominatrixes who have capitalized on her distinctive look (long, jet-black hair with short bangs), Bettie Page has been a cottage industry during the past 20 years.

Page's image is being marketed aggressively by her agents at CMG Worldwide, the intellectual property powerhouse that has represented the images and estates of Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and many other celebrities of the past — and presumably, Page is receiving a great deal in royalties from all the T-shirts, posters, beach towels, coffee mugs and other items depicting her.

One easily could spend a few hundred dollars purchasing all the Page-related DVDs that are sold online at Amazon.com and elsewhere, and the Page-inspired paintings of erotic artist Olivia DeBerardinis have been hot sellers.

New Converts

But in the 1970s and 1980s, Page's image was more of an underground phenomenon, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s that a new generation of converts rescued her from obscurity. Although Page is a member of the WWII generation, she has become a Generation X and Generation Y icon. One of the young Page admirers who have embraced her look is London resident Kittie Klaw, a well-known fetish model/neo-burlesque performer whose stage name was inspired by photographers Irving and Paula Klaw, two siblings who documented Page extensively in the 1950s.

The 24-year-old Kittie, who grew up in Scotland and operates the popular Ministry of Burlesque website with James Malach (a webmaster for Britain's leading fetish fashion magazine Skin Two), told XBIZ, "It seems like Bettie's fame skipped a generation and lay dormant until now. My parents had never heard of her; they didn't know who she was. But my generation has been very quick to pick up on images of her. It's almost as if people are seeking information from a bygone era — possibly seeking advice from the ancients the way that people in ancient pagan societies sought advice from the elders."

But fellow London resident Tony Mitchell, who is Skin Two's editor and is widely regarded as one of Britain's top Page experts, notes that while most baby boomers were unaware of Page in the 1970s and 1980s, that wasn't true of all boomers — and Mitchell stressed that the Page revival actually started in the 1970s with people who were in the underground punk, Goth and BDSM/fetish scenes.

"The Bettie Page revival didn't just start in the 1990s, it exploded," Mitchell explained. "It had been gradually building up since the 1970s. There was 20 years of gradual underground buildup, but it went seriously mainstream in the 1990s. That was when a lot of people who weren't interested in fetish noticed Bettie Page, but people who were seriously interested in fetish had been aware of her in the 1970s and 1980s."

Mitchell added that in the 1980s, he had a girlfriend, journalist Beverley Glick, who used Bettie Page as a pen name. Most baby boomers didn't get the reference back then, but Glick's pen name inspired big smiles from underground punks, goths and fetish/BDSM enthusiasts who were hip to Page's legacy. Mitchell said that Page's image has since become so ubiquitous in both Europe and North America that a professional journalist like Glick wouldn't dare use Bettie Page as a pen name today — it would be wildly inappropriate now.

Von Teese Appeal
Of all the fetish models who have been greatly influenced by Page's look, the most famous is Heather Sweet, better known as Dita Von Teese. In March, the 33-year-old Von Teese was busy promoting her new book "Burlesque and the Art of the Teese" when she addressed the Page revival for XBIZ.

Von Teese (who married alternative rocker Marilyn Manson in 2005) pointed out that during the Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower years, Page was very much a cult figure.

"Bettie Page was just one of the many pinup models of her day," Von Teese told XBIZ. "She wasn't a big star at the time. Some people knew her, but I would liken her fame to that of one of the many modern Playboy or fetish models — a certain degree of recognition, but nothing compared to the international fame she has attained in the past decade. I even remember noticing nearly overnight the change in her fame. In early 1990, I had Bettie Page's look down. I was usually called Cleopatra, but then one day, the E! Channel had a special about her, and suddenly they knew what the look was. Before that, the only people who knew who Bettie was were fetishists and serious pinup collectors."

Von Teese went on to say: "Bettie is part of an elite group of style icons that will always be remembered. One hundred years from now, we will remember Marilyn, Marlene, Garbo, Bettie, Rita and even a few modern women like Madonna and Cher. But the current 'young hot cookie cutter stars' will most likely be forgotten. It's the unique women who weren't afraid to be true to themselves and celebrate their differences rather than try to fit the mold that we will remember."

The Klaw Connection

One of the reasons that fetishists and BDSM practitioners hold Page in such high regard is the fact that she experimented with bondage and S&M in some of the material she made with Irving Klaw in the 1950s — a decade that often inspires thoughts of "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver," not leather-clad women with whips and chains.

Having a Page-like hairstyle certainly hasn't hurt Veronica Bound, a Philadelphia-based professional dominatrix who is the curator of the Aphrodite Gallery (an erotic art gallery that is associated with the fetish clothing boutique Passional) and teaches alternative sexuality classes. The 36-year-old Bound stressed that as much as she admires Page, she didn't set out to look like her. Bound went with the short bangs because her hairdresser felt they "framed my face better," but even so, she has found the look to be a definite plus with certain clients.

"Some of my clients are familiar with the very fetishistic Bettie Page and have latched onto her as a very sexual and erotic image, and when they notice my black hair and the short bangs, they're like, 'Oh, I want to get spanked by Bettie Page,'" Bound said. "I don't really think I look that much like her — the hair does a lot of it — but it's close enough for them."

Discussing Page's cultural impact, Bound explained that Page's kinkier work with Klaw would be considered "BDSM light" by 2000s standards.

Societal Attitudes
"Our society and culture have finally caught up to Bettie Page," Bound said. "In 2006, we can deal with what Bettie Page did in the 1950s. But if you were to actually put out images of what goes on now in S&M and dungeon clubs, our society on the whole is not ready to deal with that — maybe in another 50 or 60 years, but not now."

Bound added, however, that what Bettie did was extremely controversial in her time, and one anti-erotica crusader who had no kind words for Page's work with Klaw in the 1950s was Democratic Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.

Kefauver, who spearheaded a government investigation of Klaw, insisted that he was corrupting American's youth and did everything possible to get Page to testify against him in court. She refused.

"When Bettie Page did bondage videos, it was very groundbreaking," Bound said. "Nowadays, what Bettie Page did with Irving Klaw wouldn't be defined as anything particularly hardcore. But in the 1950s, those videos completely shocked the authorities."

Bill Margold, who was an adult film star in the 1970s and remains an outspoken adult industry activist, is old enough to remember Kefauver's anti-erotica campaign.

Margold, now 62, was 12 in 1956, and he remembers Kefauver and other moralists of the day railing against Page's erotica.

"I remember Bettie Page being called a corrupter of youth, and I remember that around that time, the EC Comics were also being raked over the coals as a corrupter of youth," Margold said.

Margold emphasized that even though Page (who posed for the January 1955 issue of Playboy wearing only a Santa Claus hat) never made any films as sexually explicit as what came about in the 1970s, she should still be recognized as an important figure in the evolution of adult entertainment.

"In the early 1970s," Margold said, "Triple-X began to play for real, and the first women to play for real and actually get credit for it were Linda Lovelace with 'Deep Throat' and Marilyn Chambers with 'Behind the Green Door.'

The Sex Queens
"I consider the modern era of porn was created in 1972, and everything before that was leading up to what would become the sociological acceptance of it," Margold said. "But I do believe that Bettie Page laid some of the groundwork for that. As far as film and photos go, I would say that Bettie Page was the grandmother of adult entertainment or the grandmother of modern-day erotica. We owe her a debt of gratitude. Every generation has its sex queens; Bettie Page, Lily St. Cyr and Candy Barr were the sex queens of their generation."

All of the Page admirers interviewed for this article illustrate her cross-generational appeal. Margold is young enough to be Page's son; Von Teese, Kittie Klaw, Bound and Philadelphia-based artist/graphic designer Joshua L. Pearson are young enough to be either her grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

The 26-year-old Pearson, who Bound chose as the Aphrodite Gallery's featured artist for the month of April, has created a piece called the Bettie Page Image Mosaic, which incorporates more than 470 pictures of her.

Pearson, who calls his company Digibilly Design and has collected 600-700 Page images, has been obsessed with her since he was 18, and he insisted that unlike others, he does not view her in an erotic way.

"Once I saw Bettie Page's face, I was hooked," he said. "Her smile and her eyes did it for me. You looked at her face and she brightened your day. There's just something about her face; I can't get enough of it. I really don't want to look at her as a sex symbol because I don't see her as a sex symbol; I see her as an image of happiness."

Often when Page's 1950s material is discussed, words like "fun" and "happy" come up as often as words like "sexy," "seductive" and "erotic."

Webmaster/writer Bonnie J. Burton — who founded one of the first Page tribute websites, The Bettie Page — told XBIZ, "The reason Bettie makes such a perfect sex icon — even though her photos are fairly tame compared to pinups and music videos of today — is that she had fun with sexual themes. It wasn't smutty or contrived. She had a way about her that made you feel like it was OK to admire her, not sleazy. Bettie brought campiness and humor back into sex, but she was also great at playing the girl next door."

Page Has Got Legs
The Baroness, a well-known fetish fashion designer who holds fetish-themed parties in New York City, is impressed with Page's longevity.

"It's amazing that Bettie Page is an icon to so many younger people," The Baroness said. "It's hard enough to be famous in your own generation, much less famous in another generation. If you ask most younger people about Veronica Lake or Barbara Stanwyck, they wouldn't have a clue who they were. But Bettie Page is somebody whose image has survived."

50 Years After 'Roth'

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, June 20, 2007

2007 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most consequential rulings in U.S. history: the Supreme Court's 1957 decision in the case Roth vs. U.S. A major turning point for American obscenity law, the Roth ruling (a 6-3 decision) made it more difficult for prosecutors to get obscenity convictions — and it is safe to say that without the Roth decision, the U.S. probably would not have become the world's biggest erotica-producing country.

Samuel Roth, a New York City-based publisher/writer battled American obscenity laws starting in the late 1920s (when he was jailed for obscenity for publishing an unauthorized version of James Joyce's "Ulysses." Roth also faced intellectual property concerns (Joyce obtained an injunction against Roth forbidding unauthorized use of his work), but obscenity law was his biggest challenge. After serving time in prison from 1936-1939 for obscenity, Roth was arrested again in 1955 for sending obscene material through the mail. Roth's case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957, which was also the year the High Court reviewed another major obscenity case: Alberts vs. California, the companion case of Roth vs. U.S.

The Los Angeles-based David Alberts, who operated a mail-order business and published pictures of nude and scantily clad women, was convicted of obscenity under California law. When Alberts appealed that conviction and his case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, he was represented by the groundbreaking 1st Amendment attorney Stanley Fleishman (whose firm, which is now Weston, Garrou, DeWitt & Walters, went on to represent numerous clients in the adult entertainment industry). Fleishman did not represent Samuel Roth or argue Roth, but legal scholars have often pointed out that Fleishman's work in the Alberts case greatly influenced the outcome of Roth — an outcome that, although not ideal, was definitely a major step forward for adult entertainment.

Profound Role

"Stanley Fleishman's role in the Roth decision was profound," veteran 1st Amendment attorney Clyde DeWitt, who is part of Weston Garrou, said. "Stanley briefed and argued Alberts vs. California, which, of course, was 50 percent of Roth. Stanley was a pioneer."

In both Alberts vs. California and Roth, the U.S. Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of obscenity prosecution; Fleishman saw Alberts' conviction as an unconstitutional violation of the 1st Amendment. There was both good and bad news for adult entertainment in the Roth and Alberts rulings. The bad news was that in both cases, the Supreme Court under the late Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that obscenity was not constitutionally protected speech. The convictions of Alberts and Roth were upheld by the Warren Court, and Roth went back to prison for several years. But the good news was that with the Roth decision, the Warren Court established a new definition of obscenity that wasn't nearly as prosecutor-friendly as the old 19th century Hicklin test that Roth vs. U.S. officially did away with.

In 1957, the Warren Court ruled that material was obscene if its "dominant theme, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest" according to the "average person, applying contemporary community standards," and the "dominant theme, taken as a whole" part of the Roth test was a crucial departure from the Hicklin test that had been established with the Regina vs. Hicklin ruling of 1868.

Regina vs. Hicklin was actually a British case, but it influenced American obscenity law for 89 years. In Regina vs. Hicklin, the British courts defined obscenity as material that tends to "deprave or corrupt" the most susceptible members of society.

Under the Hicklin test, even a small, isolated, mildly erotic part of an artistic work could make the entire work obscene — and in the U.S., an outspoken supporter of that test was moral crusader/activist Anthony Comstock, who called for much tougher obscenity prosecution when he persuaded Congress to pass the so-called Comstock Law (which led to at least 3,000 arrests) in 1873. Thanks to Comstock, the Hicklin test was used to ban everything from pamphlets promoting birth control to Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales."

A long list of attorneys, judges and 1st Amendment activists spoke out against the Hicklin standard and "Comstockery" (Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's term for zealous censorship based on alleged obscenity or immorality) in the late 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century, but it wasn't until the Roth decision that the U.S.'s highest judicial entity officially abolished the Hicklin standard in the U.S. once and for all. And for prosecutors in obscenity cases, having to evaluate an entire book, magazine or film under the Roth test was much more challenging than evaluating an isolated passage under the Hicklin test.

"The whole Regina vs. Hicklin concept rested on a premise that has turned out to be flawed," L.A.-based 1st Amendment attorney Allan B. Gelbard said. "There is no proof that exposure to adult materials harms anybody in any way, and even if there are some people who might be harmed by it, that doesn't mean you make it illegal for everybody else.

"You can't make all of society safe for the sandbox. If something is inappropriate for a 6- year-old child, that doesn't mean that you can prevent a 30-year-old adult from having it. You can't prevent a 30-year-old adult from having something because it might fall into the hands of a child. If we based everything that adults can have access to on what is appropriate for a 6-year-old, adults would never have a gun or a car."

Decision's Impact

While civil Libertarians believe that the Roth decision ultimately did more good than harm, hardcore social conservatives flat-out detest the decision. First Amendment attorney Gregory Piccionelli, who has spent much of his career battling modern-day Comstockery, said, "Roe vs. Wade and Roth v. U.S. are the Religious Right's most hated cases."

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has indicated that he would like to see a return to a Hicklin-like standard, and Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly has complained that "the flood of pornography started with the Warren Court."

Adult entertainment did, in fact, become increasingly plentiful during what DeWitt and others call the Roth/Memoirs Era — that is, 1957-1973. The Memoirs part is Memoirs vs. Massachusetts, a case the Supreme Court decided in 1966. The Warren Court's Memoirs decision essentially upheld the Roth decision and noted that obscenity was "utterly without redeeming social value." DeWitt pointed out that during the Roth/Memoirs Era, "the country evolved from a very subdued Playboy to 'Deep Throat.'"

The Roth/Memoirs Era ended when, in 1973, the Supreme Court under the late Chief Justice Warren Burger (Earl Warren's replacement) examined the landmark Miller vs. California case. The Burger Court's ruling in Miller vs. California established a new three-prong test for obscenity that maintained some parts of the Roth test but replaced the "utterly without redeeming social value" element with what is known as the "SLAPS test."

According to the Supreme Court's Miller test (which remains 34 years later), a creative work is obscene if it: 1) appeals to a prurient interest when contemporary community standards are applied, 2) is patently offensive, and 3) lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value when taken as a whole (the so-called SLAPS test).

If a prosecutor cannot prove to a jury that erotic material meets all three of those criteria for obscenity, the jury must provide a "not guilty" verdict. In 1973, DeWitt recalled, some adult entrepreneurs feared that the SLAPS part of the Miller test would make it easier for prosecutors to send them to jail. But as it turned out, adult entertainment became more plentiful and more explicit; it was during the 1970s that the adult film market truly exploded.

"[Miller] flat-out said that Congress could regulate morality, and that's just wrong," DeWitt said. "But Miller has not proven to be the train wreck that everyone thought it would be. After all, look where we have all gone since then. Let's face it, you can get every kind of erotic media everywhere now, except retail stores, which are fewer and far between."

DeWitt added that the Roth decision not only had an impact on adult entertainment — it had an impact on mainstream entertainment as well.

Clients "in the Trenches"

"My clients in adult entertainment are in the trenches," DeWitt said, "and it is the battles that they fight that pave the way for the lyrics in rock 'n' roll and rap. I mean, how could anyone even think about prosecuting some store for music with raunchy lyrics when the same store sells DVDs with DP gang-bang scenes?"

Where U.S. obscenity law will go in the future remains to be seen. While 1st Amendment purists hope to see obscenity prosecution abolished altogether in the U.S., Christian Right fundamentalists long for a return to a pre-Roth decision test for obscenity — and if the Supreme Court did replace the Miller test with a Hicklin-like test, it would be disastrous for American adult companies (many of which would no doubt relocate to Continental Europe if they were facing that type of nightmare). But Piccionelli doesn't see the U.S. taking such a giant step backward.

"It is insanity for Rick Santorum to believe that the country would tolerate a return to a 19th century standard for obscenity," Piccionelli said, also noting that vanilla erotica has become harder and harder to prosecute in the Internet era.

Ideally, Piccionelli added, he would like to see the U.S. government quit wasting taxpayers' dollars prosecuting consensual adult erotica and worry about terrorism and child pornography instead. And Gelbard also said that he would like to see obscenity prosecution abolished in the U.S. on constitutional grounds. But until that happens, Gelbard warned, adult-oriented entrepreneurs will need to be on guard.

"The whole concept of obscenity law is flawed," Gelbard said. "The whole idea that some speech is so sexually explicit that it somehow loses its protection as speech is ridiculous. The other areas of speech that are restricted are based on real harm. As everybody has heard, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, but that isn't because the word fire is offensive; that's because the word fire might cause a stampede and cause people to get killed.

"When the government restricts speech, there is supposed to be a really, really good reason — what we call a compelling interest — and there is supposed to be no greater restriction than necessary to effectuate that. If somebody is offended by sexually explicit speech, that's good and fine; you restrict it by saying that it shall not be forced upon them, but you don't make it illegal ab initio. That's just stupid.

"And the other part of it is that obscenity is the only area of the law where you don't know if you are breaking the law. If you walk into a bank with a gun and say, 'Give me all your money,' there is no question that you are breaking the law by robbing a bank. But if I make an adult movie today and three years from today, some prosecutor decides to prosecute me for obscenity, how was I supposed to know it was illegal when I thought it was perfectly artistic?"