Bettie Page with Bangs and without Bangs.

From a scrapbook circa 1955 - 1960 it’s Bettie Page with and without bangs. There is no original source, but I believe the adjacent photos appeared in one of Robert Harrison’s magazines like Wink or Titter. Collection Jim Linderman / Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Bettie Page by Rudolph Rossi Original 8 x 10 photograph tinted by hand c. 1953

Bettie Page by Rudolph Rossi Original 8 x 10 photograph tinted by hand c. 1953
Collection Jim Linderman / Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Bettie Page Nude Camera Club Study by Rudolph Rossi 1952

Bettie Page Nude Camera Club Study by Rudolph Rossi 1952 Original 8 x 10 Hand-tinted by the artist.  Collection Jim Linderman

Was Dan DeCarlo Influenced by Bettie Page ? Veronica is a Bettie

The visually acuity team here at Dull Tool Dim Bulb finds proof the 1950s comics were as bad as Kefauver and his confederates thought.  Veronica is BETTIE. Page, to be exact.   Here Dan DeCarlo (of Archie Fame) bases a gag drawing on America's favorite fetish model!   The Bettie page photo is from a stereoslide of the model which circulated in the late 1950s.  DeCarlo reportedly first freelanced for Archie Comics in the late 1950s.  Betty and Veronica were created before DeCarlo took over the drawing duties, but certainly he was looking at some smut during his off hours.
  
BOOKS by The author available HERE and HERE

Gene Bilbrew Draws Bettie Page as a Costume

It's time to start preparing for Halloween again.  Here, Gene Bilbrew, African-American fetish artist most prominent in the 1950s and 1950s shows what you will need to show up as Bettie Page. See also the book TIMES SQUARE SMUT  for more about the illustrator.

Bettie Page and Dog visit Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Bettie Page Original Contact Print signed by Bunny Yeager on reverse and photograph from the same session on the cover of Sunbathing and Health Magazine March 1956.  
Photograph Collection Jim Linderman

Bunny Yeager Edits Bettie Page

 

Why would Bunny Yeager,  my favorite Bettie Page photographer reject this photograph of Jungle Girl up a tree?  She had BETTER ones!  An original contact print, "edited out" by Bunny Yeager, but it remains a little treasure today.  Signed by Ms. Yeager on the reverse.  The orange grease pen provides a reminder that an artist was behind the camera as well, and while Bettie had the look Bunny had the eye. 

NOTES:  Original photograph of Bettie Page circa 1955 Signed by Bunny Yeager on Reverse Contact Print collection Jim Linderman.  More information on the Jungle Girl series is HERE on an earlier post.  Layout below taken from eBay…unknown source, sorry.

Books and Ebooks by Jim Linderman are available for preview or purchase HERE

Bettie Page Wood Carving Folk Art collection Jim Linderman

Bettie Page Wood Carving

Amateur Carved Wood Tribute to the Queen of the Pin Up  Anonymous circa 1960
Collection Jim Linderman

The Tawdry Origins of Glamour Photography Proto Porn the Book

During the 1950s, under the ruse of "Art Studies" and "Figure Studies" businessman skirted the law publishing hundreds of digest-sized primitive camera art photographs of nearly nude women. Seldom dated, by somewhat disreputable publishers, the digests featured burlesque dancers and models such as Bettie Page in makeshift studios, and were among the first books to challenge censorship and the conventions of the times as it related to photographs of the female form. The tawdry origins of Glamour Photography! The booklets are today scarce and seldom seen. Dubbed Proto-Porn, over 100 have been collected in book form by the first time by Jim Linderman. Proto-Porn details the publishers and addresses the conflicting notions of art and nudity of the Eisenhower years. Colorful, disreputable and quasi-legal, the books nonetheless pre-date modern-day fashion and nude photography. Tame by any standard today, the books have not been shown in over 50 years, and never before collected in a book.

The book PROTO-PORN : THE ART FIGURE STUDY SCAM OF THE 1950s is available as a $5.99 ebook download for iPad or Paperback HERE

Randal Levenson Photographer sends information on Cass Carr, Harlem Photographer and Bettie Page Promoter

Photograph copyright Randal Levenson No Reproduction without artist's permission

Master Photographer Randal Levenson was kind enough to get in touch and reveal some previously unknown information about Bettie Page photographer (and organizer of the infamous Camera Club outings in which she was discovered) Cass Carr.  As it has been well over 50 years now, and new information on early African-American photographers of the 1950s  (much less one central to Bettie Page's career)  is increasingly scarce and valued by scholars, I'm happy to share this snippet from Mr. Levenson...as well as crib one of his astounding photos.

"Re Camera Club Girls, I knew Cass Carr when he lived in the cellar of a building off 5th Ave in NYC and made his living buying GSA-auctioned photo equipment in DC and bringing it back to his cellar quarters, cramming the stuff in as best as possible and selling the stuff to eccentrics who would clamber all over it, looking for a 'find'. The place was also a sort of clubhouse for old timer photographers.  I made the DC trip myself a couple of times."

My book on Cass Carr and his Camera Club Outings is Here.

Randall Levenson is himself the outstanding photographer responsible for In Search of the Monkey Girl which was published by Aperture.  Levenson's work is represented by Joseph Bellows Gallery and Robert Klein Gallery. He further reports his current project is "chasing snake-handling ministers, chicken fighters, moonshiners and loggers in Tennesee, Alabama and Georgia." so I'd say much good work is forthcoming. 
 
The artist's website is HERE

The Legs of Bettie Page

Detail from an original hand-tinted photograph circa 1952 taken by Rudolph Rossi at a Camera Club session in New York City.
See also TIMES SQUARE SMUT
Also of interest is THE BOOK OF ROCK AND ROLL

Weegee Bettie Page and the FBI The Last (?) Unpublished Photographs and What Weegee told the FBI about Bettie Page

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


What if you could put Bettie Page, the most influential pinup model of the last 50 years in the same room with Weegee, certainly one of the most famous photographers in the world...and he had a camera in his hands? I'd say it would be so juicy even the FBI would be interested. And it appears they were!

Search for a photograph of Bettie Page taken by Weegee. One appears on the International Center of Photography website, which is appropriate as Weegee's widow Wilma Wilcox donated his extensive archive to the museum in 1993. The photo actually appears on Fans in a Flashbulb, the museum's exceptional blog.

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) was personal friends with the model, for years living only three blocks apart from each other just off Times Square (Weegee on West 47th Street and Ms. Page on West 46th Street), a walk one can do in less than five minutes, even Weegee with a cigar. There is a story reported that Weegee once climbed into a bathtub fully clothed with Bettie hoping for a better photo until she literally kicked him out. But until now, very few of the photographs Weegee took of his beautiful acquaintance have ever been publicly shown.
Cass Carr, Harlem jazz musician and promoter of amateur camera club outings also had a space in the very same neighborhood at 218 West 47th Street (a mere two blocks from Weegee's house) which he called the "Concorde Camera Circle" with a rudimentary studio. I believe the revealing studio shot here showing other participants snapping away was taken at Carr's place. It is typical of Weegee to create his own particular view in a photographic setting. The one thing you do NOT want to see in a photo of Bettie Page is other men, but there you go. Leave it to Weegee to turn the camera on the cameramen.

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

Carr also arranged outings to local farms and parks for camera club participants prior to forming the Concorde Club (previously known as the Lens Art Club) but he changed the club's name after being arrested along with others for promoting an outing in South Salem, New York. Some accounts have Weegee arrested at a camera club outing along with Ms. Page, if so it probably would have been the South Salem, New York shoot on July 27, 1952.

One thing I can confirm is the outdoor photographs here were taken at Headley Farm in New Jersey, as the gas pump has figured in other photographer's pictures. Also present at the shoot, which took place on September 9, 1956, were photographers Art Amsie, Arnold Kovacks, Don Baida, and an unknown woman photographer seen here on the left holding her own camera with the boys.

As far as I know, this unknown woman's pictures of Bettie have not turned up, but we can now say Bettie was photographed by at least three women, the others being Paula Klaw (Paula Kramer) and Bunny Yeager (Linnea Eleanor Yeager)

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

The Weegee photographs (and there are more) are beautiful pictures of the model in her prime. Striking poses of a young model obviously both aware of her talents and enjoying the session. That they were taken by one of the most interesting and talented photographers in history adds to their charm and importance.

The photographs Weegee took of Bettie Page have never been shown, and it is an honor I do not take lightly. It is also the reason the copyright notice I have placed under each image is not to be ignored.

One of the Weegee photos of the model taken in a studio is notable primarily for the unusual bikini Bettie wears which she would have made herself! It was a talent she was proud of, but maybe she should have stuck with store-bought. It also appears in a cropped version on a website or two, but in poor and possibly purloined quality.

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

The other Weegee image from the ICP collection which has appeared on the web is a cropped print showing Ms. Page in virtually the same pose taken at the same day by four different photographers.

Another Weegee photograph here shows Ms. Page in a make-shift studio not as yet identified. It could be either of their own apartments, as Page was known to pose individually on request and for her standard modeling fee. It is not known (to me anyway) if Weegee was in the habit of hiring individual models, but he did sell and publish other cheesecake photographs in news digests and quite likely some joke and gag publications. I would like to think Bettie gave him a freebie on this one!


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images
But what of the FBI? Recently the FBI released several documents on Bettie Page, likely in response to repeated requests. As we know, the model was harassed and hounded by zealots and government agencies during her modeling years. Once being called by the Kefauver Committee in conjunction with their investigation of Irving Klaw, and earlier in relation to an obscenity bust in 1956 Harlem (in which the amateur bondage model was asked about "ping pong paddles" and a riding crop. She denied being involved, and also denied knowing of any photographs of the sort being produced in Harlem.



CLICK TO ENLARGE


In the the newly released FBI document pictured here I noticed a most interesting story hiding in the redacted print! Half way down, note the passage enlarged here which indicates photos of the model were "turned over on 5/25/60...by (name omitted) also known as (name omitted) a photographer who resides at (location omitted.) Now I do not know of any other New York City photographer working with a short pseudonym who took pictures of Bettie Page! So there you go... it now looks like we can add Weegee to the long list of artists who have been pestered by the long arm of the law.


CLICK TO ENLARGE

Now if I were writing this for a tabloid in the 1950s, when the neighborhood all three principles called home was known as "Hell's Kitchen" I would have titled this 'WEEGEE SQUAWKS TO FEDS" but to be fair, anyone with the slightest connection to "dirty" pictures was vulnerable to such puritanical procedures, when the laws attempting to define obscenity were far more strict than today. So let's call them all pioneers rather than pigeons.


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

I would like to thank the International Center of Photography for allowing me to use the above unpublished photographs from their archive to help illustrate this discovery and story. If you are not an active member or supporter of the museum, please take the time to join.



Jim Linderman is author of Times Square Smut and The Birth of Rock and Roll

 "Times Square Smut" available now covers the same time period as the above in detail and publishes numerous works by African-American artist Eugene Bilbrew unseen for over 50 years. Times Square Smut will tell the story of denizen and mobster Edward Mishkin, who printed and sold proto-porno soft-core books using the artist's work on 42nd Street at the same time Irving Klaw was publishing photographs of Bettie Page. In the meantime.  The Birth of Rock and Roll might be the most unusual music book you have ever seen!

Beyonce, Bettie Page and a Secret from the Past (With the Negatives)

Now that Beyonce has channeled Bettie Page in the new Lady Gaga video it is time for me to reveal a little secret and entertain all you gents and gals with even the slightest interest in the history of photography...at least as it relates to women with whips. First of all, every year it is increasingly evident NO model has influenced popular culture more than Bettie Page. So curious given her clumsy short movies and relatively short career. But the face and derriere? To die for.

One can't tell the story of Bettie Page without the fellow who first put her in a studio with bondage props...Irving Klaw. Wiki him up...or rent the underrated film The Notorious Bettie Page directed by Mary Harron in which Gretchen Mol makes Beyonce's bangs look glued on. Now here is the secret you will all thank me for. As part of the deal made with prosecutors in the 1950's, Klaw burned his negatives. We all know that, right?

WRONG!

Not only does a sizable archive still exist the family is STILL selling incredible glossy photographs of Bettie for pennies, just like they did in the 1950's from the back of sleazy men's magazines. The place is called Movie Star News and hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of glorious black and white photographs are shown on their website. Movie Star News used to print a big fat catalog when I was living near their little workshop and studio on west 18th Street, and walking into the place is like time-warp central. They still sell movie stills of B-grade actors, posters...and grumpy folks still look up suspiciously and growl "whaddya want?" when you enter. Well, we all know we aren't here for that old 8 x 10 of Vince Edwards as Ben Casey.

Ask for the Klaw catalog, circle the numbers you want, and skulk back in a week later to pick up the pics. The photographs are as gorgeous as the model. So if you want to taste a little of that "unmarked brown paper wrapper" spice, take a peek. Who says old New York City is gone?

You are welcome.

For more tales of the sleazy underbelly of our shared cultural closets, follow Vintage Sleaze the blog

Camera Club Girls: Bettie Page and the Work of Rudolph Rossi Vernacular Photography

CAMERA CLUB GIRLS: Bettie Page and the Work of Rudolph Rossi

These are cropped detail portions of the extraordinary hand-painted photographs of Rudolph Rossi. Rossi was an informal member of the New York City Concorde Camera Club in the repressive 1950's. For a ten dollar fee, he photographed Bettie Page and a plethora of interracial models, then later meticulously hand-painted the photographs creating the illusion of color photography. An exceptional body of work by a previously unknown and unrecognized photographer and erotic artist from a time when such activity was taboo. Bettie Page, who passed away last year, is the most famous and most recognizable pin-up model of all time. You'll have to trust the first image here is indeed Ms. Page. A new website publishes some of the photographs, hopefully the first step in generating interest in the previously unknown and unseen work. To see the original works, you will have to "click through" a mature audiences page. visit "CAMERA CLUB GIRLS"

Rudolph Rossi Original Hand-Painted Photographs (detail) c. 1950, Collection Jim Linderman