Bettie Page Reveals All Page #2

and it was in the paper,

a great big picture of me

and a big headline,

"Tenant Bashes Landlord".

Well, Billy came back

from fighting overseas.

He had battle fatigue,

you know, he was in the hospital,

in the army hospital in

Guam for about six months.

When he came home,

he wasn't the same guy.

He was a jealous maniac.

Accused me of sleeping with

every sailor in San Francisco,

and he went off the deep end.

So I tried so hard to make a go of

it with him but it was impossible.

We were sitting in the kitchen,

and he had a knife

right at my throat,

he was gonna cut me with

it if I divorced him.

I went ahead and

divorced him anyhow.

When I went to New York,

I was getting over

my divorce from Billy Neal

and the miserable marriage.

I liked all the lights on Broadway.

And I liked Central Park.

All I paid for my apartment

on West 46th Street,

46 dollars and 29 cents a month.

I used to go to the

Roseland ballroom.

And then I went dancing so much.

I was a movie fiend in those days.

Didn't cost much of

anything, 40 or 50 cents,

something like that,

to see a double feature.

One night, I was very lonely,

and I was walking along Broadway,

and a good looking fella came up

and started talking to

me, introduced himself.

He was very polite and courteous,

seemed like a very nice fella.

He asked me, "Would

like to go dancing?"

I said, "Sure, I'd love to go."

So we got in the car,

and he and I sat in the back,

and the girlfriend and

the boyfriend driving.

Well, we stopped at a red light,

and two guys jumped in the car.

We went farther on,

two more fellas got in the car.

But when it hit me, a big

pain shot through me

as we crossed that

bridge and I thought,

"We are not going dancing."

You can imagine how you

would have felt then

with six men in the car

and the two women.

The guy in front and his girlfriend

got out of the car and

went behind the building.

I thought real fast, and

I said I'm menstruating,

you can't have sex with me.

And all five of those

snakes forced me

to perform oral sex

on every one of them.

They could have killed me or something

and left me dead behind that school.

I went home to Mama right

away, I was so frightened.

Back in New York, the first

secretarial job I ever had

in New York was for the

American Bread Company.

I was a secretary to

the office manager.

I had a small room up on the fifth

floor of an old brownstone house.

Somebody knocked on the

door around midnight.

Who is it?

And he said, "Bettie, open

the door, it's Billy."

- What do you want?

- "Let me in."

A friend of mine in the next

apartment, a little fella named Jimmy,

a 50-year-old man,

came out to the door

and asked what was going on.

Well, Billy told him to

mind his own business,

and he cut little Jimmy

across the face,

a couple of inches

with a knife now.

He was going to kill me with a

knife is what he was going to do.

He must have left.

He didn't come back.

I was working as

secretary, way up high

in the Eastern Airlines

building on the 12th floor,

overlooking the skating

rink in Rockefeller Center,

a very nice place to work.

And that's where I met the love

of my life, Carlos Garcia Arrese.

You know I was a nut over

dancing back in those days.

And he taught me the rumba, and

mambo, and cha-cha, and samba.

And he was very good at it.

Well, we dated and we

were making mad love,

he was a very good lover.

One night I was up

at his apartment,

all of a sudden, a big

loud knocking on the door,

"Carlos, open up the door,

I know you're in there."

And she was really mad, and I

thought, oh gosh, who's that?

And he said, "Bettie,

that's my wife."

I said, "Your wife!"

I never felt so low in my

life, I felt like two cents.

I didn't want to see him again

because he had deceived me.

But if I had known he was married

I would never have dated him.

I always wanted to

be a fashion model.

And I went to... let's see, what was

the name of the most famous one?

Ford, that's it.

She says, "Oh, my."

She says, "You would never

do as a fashion model."

She says, "In the first place,

you're not tall enough."

But she says, "More than that,"

she says, "you're too hippy."

You've got to be skin

and bones, you know.

Even back then, to

be a fashion model.

In October 1950, I was

walking out on Coney Island.

Nobody was on the

beach in that area,

except this black

fella, Jerry Tibbs.

He gave me his card and he said,

"I'm a Brooklyn policeman."

He said, "I think you'd

make a good pinup model."

He said, "I have a studio,

if you would come over there

free of charge, I'll

make you up a portfolio

that you could take

around to the studios."

I posed in a couple

of bikinis of his.

But he said, "Bettie, have you

ever tried to wear bangs?"

He said, "You have a very high forehead,

I think you'd look good in bangs."

So I went home and cut me some.

And I've been wearing them ever since,

its sort of been a trademark of mine,

I'm still wearing them.

That's that famous

Bettie Page look, isn't it?

I think I was about 27

when I started modeling,

but I looked much younger.

All of the writers and editors

would say I was 22 years old,

they were saying that for

years that I was 22.

I never refuted it, I never said

anything one way or another,

let them think what they wanted to.

The first modeling I did

was for the camera clubs.

First one was Cass Carr who

was an orchestra leader.

Every Sunday we'd

say we're going out

to Headly Farm in New

Jersey or some other farm,

or we're going out to Fire

Island or Broad Channel Bay.

Bettie Page and four other amateur

models will be with them,

and it would cost ten

dollars or five dollars.

There would be maybe 30

or 40 camera club members

and three or four models.

We would go on field

trips, on weekends,

upstate New York,

over in New Jersey,

on the beaches,

especially on Fire Island.

I got 25 dollars a day.

And we would be gone all afternoon

and they would bring lunches,

and I enjoyed the

outings very much.

They were always polite

and courteous to us.

I enjoyed posing for them.

It was absolutely fun

photographing Bettie.

And I could tell, I think it

shows up in the photographs,

that she enjoyed it too.

She was happy.

She was exhilarated.

She projected.

She came right out at you.

Whereas others were just pretty.

When she turned, she didn't

just turn and smile,

her hands, her body, her feet,

everything moved, everything moved.

She smiled with her face, she

smiled with her whole body.

And that's something

very few girls got.

The good pinup

involves three things:

Pose, clothes, and expression.

She knew just when I

said, pert, saucy,

frisky, haughty, angry, sullen,

whereas with many other

models I'd have to tell them,

"Well, no, tilt your

head up a little bit,"

"Move it up like that,"

"Raise your eyes," etcetera.

She would pop up into

that right away.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes