The Christian Faith of Pin-up Betty Page

The New York Daily News has a feature on the buzz-generating new film about the famous pinup girl Betty Page, starring Gretchen Mol.

And finally someone has noted whether or not The Notorious Betty Page deals with the fact that Page’s Christian faith played, and continues to play, a major role in her life. (I linked to another article a few weeks ago that addressed Page’s current professions of faith, but now we know that aspect of her life made it into the film.)

A life-long Baptist, Page has never disavowed her modeling career and has been pleased to be recognized even when evangelizing as a lay preacher. In a March 2006 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Page said, “Being in the nude isn’t a disgrace unless you’re being promiscuous about it.” Yet her girlhood was extremely harsh: she was molested by her father and sexually assault by two strangers.

Neither Mol nor Harron share Page’s faith, but they do express it in the film: “The church is where she turned in her darkest times,” says Mol. “From the time she was a child, she felt this: When you’re down, you can look to Jesus, and that’s where she turned after she was raped. Not to her mother, not to a friend. She couldn’t tell anybody. She could not make sense of what had happened.”