In the process, Volkmar developed carpal tunnel syndrome and learned a lot about her anatomy.
"Her right eyebrow slants up and is shorter than the left one; her right nostril is higher than her left nostril," he noted. "The indent beneath her nose and above her upper lip is unusually wide. Her four front incisors are larger than normal.
"Her right eye is lower than the left one and slants down.... Her right knee has a dimple in it, and there is a famous notch on the back of her right thigh, four inches above the knee. Her thumb and hands are muscular, almost mannish. Same with her feet.
"Her rear end is noticeably squarish, and there are two creases under the left buttocks and one under her right buttocks....
"It all adds up to this," he said. "She looks like fun."
That alchemy of asymmetry and temperament inadvertently unleashed a cultural movement.
A motion picture, "The Notorious Bettie Page," is scheduled for release in April. Artist Olivia De Berardinis, whose work Page was autographing, expects to publish a book this year featuring her own idealized portraits of the woman once known as "The Queen of Curves" and "Dark Marilyn." De Berardinis' large paintings of Page sell for about $1,500 without Page's signature.
In 1955, Page was summoned to Capitol Hill by Sen. Estes Kefauver, a moral crusader known for wearing coonskin caps. Kefauver, a Tennessee Democrat, was investigating the pornography business.
Kefauver's committee never compelled Page to testify, but the uproar caused the Klaws to close their business. At 35, Page quit modeling and moved to Florida, where she married a much younger man whose passions, she later learned, were watching television and eating hamburgers.
"Six weeks into the marriage, on New Year's Eve 1959," she recalled, "I wanted to go dancing with him at a nightclub. He said he'd rather get drunk with his brothers."
Page charged out of the house in tears, wondering whether to divorce him. Down the street, she noticed a white neon sign over a little white church with its door open.
"The Lord took me by the hand and we stepped inside," she recalled. "I was crying in the back row about my sins. I turned my life over to the Lord."
In her new life as a born-again Christian, Page immersed herself in Bible studies and served as a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade.
