A Golden Age for a Pinup

"My land! Is that supposed to be me?" asked Page, surveying a painting of her reclining in a negligee with an ecstatic smile on her face.

Putting pen to canvas and concentrating mightily, she muttered, "I was never that pretty."

But to generations of men, she was.

She was born Bettie Mae Page in Jackson, Tenn., 105 miles southwest of Nashville. She was the oldest girl among Roy and Edna Page's six children. Roy, an auto mechanic, "molested all three of his daughters," Page said.

Edna divorced Roy in 1933 after he got a teenager pregnant, but life didn't get any easier for Bettie.

"All I ever wanted was a mother who paid attention to me," Page recalled. "She didn't want girls. She thought we were trouble. She didn't help with homework or teach me to sew or cook.

"She didn't go to the school plays I was in or go to my high school graduation.

"When I started menstruating at 13, I thought I was dying because she never taught me anything about that."

Two weeks before her final exams in high school, her mother's much younger lover "tried to pull me into his car. My mother nearly murdered me over that, then made me live with my father. So I couldn't review my exam notes, which were at home.

"Because of that I got beat out of graduating valedictorian by a quarter of a grade point and lost my dream of getting a scholarship to attend Vanderbilt University," she said. "It was the worst disappointment of my life."

As she continued to labor on the autographs, Page marveled at a portrait of her as a teacher -- albeit one in impossibly high heels and with voluptuous curves encased in leather.

"Look at those big long legs on 9-inch heels," she said. "I look 9 feet tall."

But she could relate to the painting's basic theme. After high school, Page earned a teaching credential. But her teaching career was short-lived.

"I couldn't control my students, especially the boys," she said.

She tried secretarial work and marriage. But by 1948 she was divorced and had moved to New York and enrolled in acting classes.

Strolling the beach at Coney Island, Page crossed paths with New York police officer and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs, who introduced her to shutterbug clubs and suggested she wear bangs to help cover a slightly protruding forehead.

From the start, Page -- whose measurements were 36-24-37 -- preferred the skimpy outfits she designed and sewed at home.