R. I. P. Bettie Page

And now Bettie...


Jeez... This has been a tough week... First Forry Ackerman and now Bettie Page.

We were just wondering where to send her Christmas card this year *sigh*.

Bettie has been a part of our Christmas for many years now... Since we were "introduced" to her by Dave Stevens not long after she resurfaced in the early 1990s. It's almost unfathomable to me that they would leave us in the same year. Bettie was always super-nice and more than generous to us when she sure didn't have to be.

Here's a piece from The Times:

Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85.

Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died at a Los Angeles hospital where she had been on life support since she had a heart attack on Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler. A cult-culture figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957.

“Exactly what captures the imagination of people in terms of popular culture is something hard to define,” Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner once said of Page. “But in Bettie’s case, I’d say it’s a combination of wholesome innocence and fetish-oriented poses that is at once retro and very modern.”

Last year Bettie's health took a turn for the worst right before Christmas. It was the first year in over a decade we didn't hear from her during the Holiday season. Just the year before she had sent us this lovely cheesecake... We were honored.

I mean after all -- who wouldn't want a Bettie Page cheesecake? (She obviously still had her sense of humor). We have so many cards and letters from her over the years that it's really surreal - at least at the moment - that we'll never hear from her again. I know both my wife and I are going to be really upset once it sinks in, but for now... Hell, I'm still numb about Forry.

Wow... bad week.

Godspeed Bettie... We'll always love and miss you.