Saturday 13 December 2008

BETTIE PAGE: ABOUT MY GUARDIAN OBIT

My obituary of Bettie Page is in today's Guardian, you can find it here. I would've liked a better main picture, but the second photo, one of Bunny Yeager's 'cheetah' shots, is fine.

But contrary to what appears there, Bettie did not 'narrate' Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous' for eleven years; the programme did a feature on her, for which she appeared only in voice-over (not wanting her fans to see how she now looked). Why the one became the other I have no idea. (Note: the error was corrected on 30/12).

Some details were omitted: Bettie always believed her failure to win the valedictorian's scholarship to Vanderbilt was the turning point of her life; she got the salutorian's scholarship to Peabody. The abuse she'd received from her mother's boarder stopped short of full sex, which was why she'd considered her sister's abuse more serious. And when she appeared at the Playboy anniversary party, she easily outshone the models like Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson who flocked to pose with her.

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