Naughty Bettie

Bettie Page was the Pinup Queen of the Universe. An early Playboy centrefold and a favourite of 1950s underground camera clubs, she posed for thousands of saucy bondage photos in which she ties up, whips and spanks other women.

Her career left an indelible mark on pop culture and helped usher in the sexual revolution. Yet she was deeply religious and finally vanished from the public eye in 1957 to devote herself to Bible studies and evangelism.

Director Mary Harron did not get to meet the reclusive model, now 83, before making The Notorious Bettie Page, a breezy biopic starring Gretchen Mol as Bettie. Harron admits that Page is still something of an enigma to her.

She obviously enjoyed what she did, the director says. So I was trying to think, what would her justification be, as a religious person?

I think everybody loves doing what they’re good at, being really great at something, and she happened to be really great at nude modelling. You can see from the pictures how much she loved it.

The Notorious Bettie Page tells Bettie’s story in the style of a 1950s movie, or rather three different 50s movies.

Her troubled early life in Tennessee -“ she was molested by her father and mistreated by a succession of men -“ is told as a black-and-white film noir. So are the investigations of the Senate subcommittee into pornography that subpoenaed her in 1955.

After her photos start appearing in glamour magazines like Wink, Beauty Parade and Titter, her life becomes a glorious Technicolor romance. Other sequences are shot using a Super 8 home movie camera.

This approach gives the film a sense of the era’s innocence in matters sexual. Page herself is portrayed as a perpetual ing?e -“ such as in the scene when she decides she’s ready to ditch the bikini.

That scene is at the heart of the film, Harron says. You have to see her standing naked, just Bettie in the woods, and the beauty and purity of that.

Harron had to find an actor willing to appear fully nude. I made it very clear to everyone that this is it, it’s not changing, you have to take the nudity on if you want the part. It would have been impossible to do the film without somebody who was very natural.

Gretchen was great because she’s as comfortable doing that as she is all dressed up.

An interesting aspect of Page’s career is the fact that two of the photographers she worked with the most were women -“ Paula Klaw (Lili Taylor) and Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson). Does Harron believe this is a coincidence?

No, because clearly there was a different dynamic going on and Bettie was more relaxed and playful. She did great photographs for men as well, but I think she felt comfortable with Paula and Bunny. Although Paula was not such a great photographer -“ she was point and shoot -“ but then she was doing the tying up too.

Harron picks unlikely heroes for her movies. I Shot Andy Warhol told the story of Valerie Solanas, the crazed Factory hanger-on who shot and seriously wounded the pop art doyen. Then there was American Psycho, a satire about a woman-hating serial killer. Now we have The Notorious Bettie Page.

I like contradictory things, not like the classic feminist heroine, or somebody who’s very noble, Harron says. That’s for somebody else to do.

Canadian-born Harron, 54, collaborated with lesbian actor Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, The L Word) on the script of Bettie Page but is herself married to a man. In fact, she once dated future UK prime minister Tony Blair.

And yes, Bettie Page has seen the film. She emerged from hiding to attend a screening with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion and was not displeased -“ except with the word notorious in the title.

She looked pretty good, Harron says. And she still had the bangs, the same haircut.

The Notorious Bettie Page screens from 8 March.