Jo Weldon's New York School of Burlesque

Photos and links added by me (Jo). Click the image above to buy it from art.com. Bettie Page Has A Secret Bent over, trussed up and in an impossibly uncomfortable position, the brunette with the shiny bangs, always looked like she was in on the funniest joke. She was my shoe-laced bondage Barbie dolls come to life. Yes, my naked Barbie Dolls enjoyed a life of flimsy Japanese rope bondage and I never quite why. I was brought up on a steady diet of my Dad's Playboys, where SM was a rare occurrence. Did I see a Olivia illustrated Bettie Page tied into a stiletto, maybe or maybe my reptilian brain was just wired that way? Bettie didn't rear up into the picture till years later when my fascination with Golden Era strippers sent me on a quest for men's old stag mag like Twitter and Wink. The girl with the stockings and the pointy bra was in on the joke and well , the others albeit lovely were doing their job. I landed a job in a secondhand bookstore that carried some old ...

"With deep personal sadness I must announce that my dear friend and client Bettie Page passed away at 6:41pm PST this evening [Dec 11] in a Los Angeles hospital. She died peacefully but had never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack nine days ago. "She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality. She is the embodiment of beauty." Mark Roesler, business agent for Bettie Page From Bettie's Official Website. Bettie's Story in Time Magazine. The Real Bettie Page by Richard Foster.

Ex-Pinup Bettie Page 'Critically Ill' In Hospital Above: Bettie by Greg Theakston . Sending her and her loved ones thoughts of comfort. Although Bettie was not a performer on the burlesque circuit, I find it a bit annoying when people get overly emphatic about how she wasn't in burlesque and shouldn't be considered when burlesque is discussed; clearly she's had such a huge influence on the culture and style of the tiki, fetish, and rockabilly cultures that have embraced and nurtured burlesque, she's far from irrelevant to the subject. Bettie doing an adorable dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIT_hj8e3GI My friend Greg Theakston, who I met through Torchy Taboo when she was working on Tease! , produced a magazine called The Betty Pages which was hugely influential on the underground upswell of Bettie Page fans. I can't scan that for you here, but you can hear an interview with Bettie in this youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Ynlp7...