From the cutting room floor: Harron on Bettie Page

In the spring, 2006, The Austin Chronicle ran two articles--"The Notorious Irving Klaw" (March 10, 2006) and "Little Underground Worlds" (April 21, 2006)--centered around my interview with The Notorious Bettie Page director, Mary Harron. As often happens with these type of things, pieces of the interview end up on the cutting room floor. In celebration of Bettie Page's 86th birthday, here are some unexpurgated Harron comments about the world's most famous pin up.




On Bettie's endearing popularity:

Her story is interesting. She disappeared then was re-found, but I think it has to do more with the images themselves. It's a culmination between the very funny, fifties, cheesecakey pin-up stuff and the bondage stuff. At the same time she's still the same person in both sets of worlds... both kinds of photographs. She's always funny and cheery even in the Klaw stuff. [It's] a hidden world of sexuality that we have discovered in the last twenty years that has very much come above ground, but with something hidden and secret, and therefore intriguing. There's that idea of the two worlds. Without that bondage stuff, I don't think she would be nearly as famous as she is today. Even though her other photographs are really wonderful.


People now are very interested in the fifties.. going back to it. But also discovering the hidden aspects of the fifties. All the stuff of American life. In a way it was the height of American stability and prosperity and everything's wonderful. And at the same time there's all these hidden darker things. To try to get a picture of it, then you look at the hidden things. Bettie represents both the public face of the fifties.. all buoyant and healthy and sexy... and her hidden photographs are the darker side.

On the appeal of Bettie to young feminists:

[Betty] is in her own world. It was part of Betty's psychology. She loved to be photographed so much. That was probably her greatest joy and satisfaction to stand on her own being photographed. She's not doing it for anyone else. She just loves it. She's almost like a kid looking in the mirror. She just loves posing. She's not asking for approval or anything. She just had this joy in herself, in her body, and in showing herself off. Young woman like that and they are trying to play with their own femininity or sexuality or try dressing up or try different roles on. She is such an interesting person to try to be because Bettie seems so happy and confident. Also, she's inappropriately happy even when she's in these ridiculous scenes. If people want to play with this kind of bondage fetish stuff, she makes it just like a game because that's all it was for her. She makes it all fun and dress up and play acting, so it makes it a harmless way to try these things out or look at these things.

As popular as the bondage images/movies remain, I much prefer this dance from Varitease.







Sadly, Bettie passed away late last year. She is missed.

My grandfather and Rocky Horror

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer blog, reporter John Petkovic wrote about the origins of the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sandwiched between the seminal influences of Universal Monsters and sci-fi kitsch, Petkovic featured this tidbit:

Pinup bondage queens: In the 1950s, New York photographer Irving Klaw spawned the careers of Bettie Page and other garter-and-lingerie pinup queens by shooting them in campy scenes full of whips and spanking and high heels.

Rick Klaw Talks about Irving Klaw

An interview with me about my famous grandfather appears on the BettiePage.com blog.

How has your own life, work and passions been shaped by experiencing the "cult" audience of Bettie Page?

The cult of Bettie enabled me to learn more about a part of my family history that I thought lost. I didn't learn about my grandfather's famous history until I was 21 and at the 1992 San Diego ComicCon. I remember the event clearly.

"Are you related to Irving Klaw?"

I stood dumbfounded. I knew the name but never expected to hear it at 21 while attending a comic book convention. Irving Klaw was my grandfather.

Irving died about 16 months before I was born. His death is the stuff of family legend.

The grey-haired man in front of me was Ray Zone. As a comic book and magazine publisher, Zone was single-handedly responsible for the 3-d boom of the late 80's.1

"He was my grandfather. Why?"

Zone proceeded to show me examples of my grandfather's work: Images of Bettie in black leather and leopard print bathing suits bound in a variety of positions. Some of the pics had Bettie with a whip. In some she was spread in doorways or suspended from a ceiling, bound and gagged. A few even had other women, but none had any nudity at all.

So you could say the "cult of Bettie" changed my life but not in the way most expect. I became curious and over the years and learned as much as I could abut his life and work. It's enabled me to re-establish a relationship with my Uncle Arth. Turns out we have a lot more in common than Irving.

Dental Revelations

Today, as I have every six months for the past ten years, I got my teeth cleaned. During that same period except when she is on vacation, the same technician has cleaned my teeth. The visit started normally enough. We discussed the weekend and what we've been up to.

"You are a writer? What do you write? Have you written a book?" I know I had mention previously that I'm a writer. Not exactly something you hide.

I had just finished telling her about me and Brandy's upcoming New York vacation and how my last trip was work related. A research trip for something I was writing.

"I'm a critic. Primarily write about pop culture. I have two pieces in the current [Austin] Chronicle."

"Yeah, but have you written a book?" Why does that always come up? Am I not a "real" writer with some 300,000 published words over the best decade but no book? Sadly for most, the book, regardless of its quality or who published it, legitimatizes a writer. Thankfully for these occasions, I have produced a book. I tell her about Geek Confidential.

"So what's next? What were you researching in New York?"


"Have you heard of Irving Klaw? He's my grandfather." I wasn't expect much of a response. The technician, as evident by her family photos and her manners of speech, is clearly a suburbanite and not the type usually knowledgeable about Bettie Page and Irving Klaw.

"As in Bettie Page? No way! I saw that movie [The Notorious Bettie Page] about her on HBO. That was your grandfather and grandmother taking the pics?"



I then explained about how the woman, Paula, was actually my grandfather's sister and filled her in on a some family history. She enjoyed the movie and was astonished about some of the things I told her about Irving. About how he practically invented the pin up industry in 1940s and his works helped to change the public perceptions about pornography.

It continually amazes me who knows about my grandfather and who wants to learn more. With HBO showing Notorious six times in April, I imagine more interested folks are going to be asking about my grandfather. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Happy Birthday, Irving Klaw

Today would have been my grandfather's 97th birthday. In celebration of the event, I am posting, under the Creative Commons license, my previously unpublished article about Irving Klaw's film career

All About the Tease

by
Rick Klaw

As a child all I knew of my grandfather was that he was a pornographer, albeit a very tame one. My mother's exact words were, “They show worse things on Cinemax.”

I first learned more about him while attending the 1989 San Diego ComicCon when publisher/artist Ray Zone first told me of my family legacy. Initially my grandfather Irving Klaw ran a mail-order business that sold pin-ups of Hollywood stars. He later expanded into pictures and films of attractive women in bondage and other fetishistic poses. Klaw pioneered both the movie star image and adult entertainment industries. His best known model, Bettie Page, was one of the most photographed women of the 1950s, appearing on more magazine covers than anyone else in the decade.

Inspired by the success of Jerald Intrator's 1952 burlesque film Striporama, my grandfather produced and directed Varietease (1954), Teaserama (1955), and Buxom Beautease (1956). The films featured burlesque acts with stripteases, comedy acts, and musicians with famed beauties Page, Lili St. Cyr, and Tempest Storm.

Also during this period, Klaw produced thousands of feet of black and white film loops featuring striptease and fetish acts. These shorts featured only women, either by themselves or sometimes in pairs, in a variety of situations often involving bondage and spanking. The models-- most famously Page-- never appeared terrified and seemed to be enjoying themselves in a non-sexual, no-threatening way. As with his photos, these movies contained only the suggestion of nudity. My grandfather often required the models to wear two pairs of panties so no pubic hair could be seen. Not a pornographer, Klaw was all about the tease.



Thanks largely to his fetish business, Klaw testified before the 1955 United States Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. The subcommittee, one year before, had famously forced the comic book industry to adopt a code to stop the publication of "inappropriate" comic book material. Now they were investigating my grandfather. The New York City press plastered the sensationalistic episode throughout the city, where Klaw became known as the "Smut King."

My grandfather's legal problems persisted for nearly ten years. Federal authorities intercepted his mail and bugged his phones. As late as 1964, Klaw was brought before a federal court on charges of conspiracy to send obscene material through the mail.

With the shifting political and social climate, Irving returned to filmmaking in 1963, producing two "lost" films: Larry Wolk's Intimate Diary of an Artist's Model and Nature's Sweethearts, co-directing the latter. Unlike, his previous films, both pictures featured a lot of topless women.

The legal and cultural ramifications of his twenty year career ushered America from the sexually conservative 1950s to the sexually charged 1960s. His impact on the exploitation films of the 1960s was profound influencing everything from Barbarella to Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!. In his book Sinema, Douglas Brode argues that Klaw's pictures of Bettie Page and "friends" inspired lesbian chic-- the notion of women as "bisexually sensuous"-- in both film and television. Rachel Schteir in the excellent Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (Oxford, 2005) asserts that "[Klaw's] movies did more to spread striptease across the country in this era [the 1950's] than any one burlesque short. [...] What they did was spread striptease, drag strips, and burlesque comedy to a provincial audience. In essence, they were giving these audiences what they might see in Miami, Las Vegas, or some other cosmopolitan city." The contemporary popularity of his movies inspired the current neo-burlesque revival in major American cities.

In late 1955, legendary exploitation filmmakers David Friedman and Dan Sonney acquired the rights to both Teaserama and Varietease for $5,000. Sonney owned burlesque theaters on Main Street in L.A. and earned back the initial investment within a year. During the 1980's, Something Weird Video introduced the movies to a new generation. Both Teaserama and Varietease are currently available on DVD.

At the time of his death in 1966-- sixteen months before I was born-- my grandfather lived in relative obscurity. Few imagined that nearly forty years later, his movies would be considered softcore classics and major precursors to the sixties "nudie-cuties" and the later hardcore porn films. Or that two features (The Notorious Bettie Page [2006] and Bettie Page: Dark Angel [2004]) would be made about Bettie Page with my grandfather as major character and that DVD compilations of Klaw's films are bestsellers. Klaw's work influenced a generation of filmmakers, photographers, and entertainers including Russ Meyer, John Waters, Madonna, Missy Suicide, and others. Ironically, without my grandfather there would have been no Cinemax.




All About The Tease by
Rick Klaw is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Kink! The Musical

The things I uncover while doing research...

"Everybody's got a little kink!"

What is Kink!, you ask? Everything you could ask for in a musical tribute to the 1950's pinup legend Bettie Page, that's what!

My grandfather is portrayed by Tom Edwards. Sadly there are no images of him as Irving Klaw.