MARILYN BEFORE SHE WAS MARILYN! by Dave Goode

If you're like me you're fascinated by the rich and famous before they became famous. There are very few true overnight success stories in the world of show business. Take for instance the definitive "blonde bombshell" of the Fabulous 50s...Marilyn Monroe.

Before she was a glamorous movie star the former Norma Jean Dougherty modeled for camera clubs and figure studies to help pay the rent while appearing in such forgettable movies like THE DANGEROUS YEARS (1947) and SCUDDA HOO! SCUDDA HAY! (1948). And as eye candy in LOVE HAPPY (1949) and RIGHT CROSS (1950). From 1946 to 1950 she modeled for famed pin-up illustrator Earl Moran at 10 dollars an hour. Which was a good piece of change in that era.

Marilyn and Moran would become friends. And she credited the painter for making her legs look better than they were. Of note Moran's daughter from his first marriage was 1940s B-Movie Queen Peggy Moran.

And speaking of B-Movies I was thinking the other day of Marilyn co-starring with Johnny Weissmuller in one of his Jungle Jim movies from Columbia. In VOODOO TIGER (1952) Jean Dean portrays Shalimar, an exotic dancer who works with a tiger in her act. When her plane crashes in Africa she is taken as the high priestess of the tiger god. A perfect role for the young, yet to be star Marilyn.

Bettie Page...B-Movie Starlet by Dave Goode

Time for another excursion into that alternate universe that my mind sometimes populates. Where Johnny Weissmuller played Prince Namor in a Sub-Mariner movie and Esther Williams played Wonder Woman. Where Bernard Gorcey won an Academy Award portraying a burlesque club owner in a movie where George Reeves portrayed an investigative reporter minus glasses.And where Steve Holland played Steve Zodiac in a live-action Fireball XL-5 movie. This week's Goode Stuff blog looks at Bettie Page...B-Movie starlet.






Miss Bettie Mae Page of Tennessee went to Hume-Fogg High School where she was a member of the debate team and graduated salutatorian of her class. She would later graduate from George Peabody College with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Eventually she made her way to New York where she worked as a secretary while she looked for work as an actress. She was discovered in 1950 by NYC Police Officer Jerry Tibbs ,an amateur photographer. It was Tibbs who suggested to Page to adapt her now iconic bang.

Bettie would find work for a number of "camera clubs" during the 50s. But it was her work for Irving Klaw that would earn her cult status. From 1952 to 1957 she would appear in dozens of 8mm and 16mm "specialty films" for Klaw. In 1953 she appeared in the grindhouse movie STRIPORAMA for Jerald Intrator. In 1954 she appeared in the Irving Klaw produced VARIETEASE. And in 1955 , the same year she was Playboy's Miss January she appeared in TEASERAMA also produced and directed by Klaw.

Reportedly Bettie had a screen-test with 20th Century Fox. But nothing ever came of it. It was rumored that her Tennessee accent cost her a shot at stardom. But while re-watching the Johnny Weissmuller Jungle Jim movie VOODOO TIGER I started imagining Bettie as eye-candy in a number of B-Movies. Imagine Bettie as one of the Vesuvian soldiers in QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE or as one of the daughters of the 40 Thieves in the Howard Hughes produced THE SON OF SINBAD.

But as long as we're playing "just imagine", imagine Bettie as Fox Comics Rulah,
Jungle Goddess, one of the many Sheena imitations found in comics. Or imagine Bettie as Fox's cult comic book heroine the Phantom Lady. That would have been a natural.