The Notorious Bettie Page, which opens in selected theatres today, should be subtitled A Star Is Reborn.
This wouldn't, however, be a reference to Bettie Page. The former "Queen of Curves" may have retired as a pin-up model in 1957 for a life of Bible-reading seclusion in California -- she turns 83 this month -- but her fame has been pretty much a pop-culture constant ever since.
No, the star here is Gretchen Mol, 33, who plays the enigmatic Page to brilliant effect in the theatrical release directed by Canadian-born Mary Harron. In fact, no one should be surprised when (not if) Mol's name shows up on the Oscar honour roll next January.
If the Mol moniker seems familiar, it may be because she actually was famous, in a sorta/kinda/maybe way, almost eight years ago when, at 25, her porcelain skin, superior cheekbones and alert nipples under a barely there Alberta Ferretti dress were featured on the cover of Vanity Fair. "Is She Hollywood's Next 'It' Girl?" the cover line coyly asked, all the while letting the Annie Leibovitz photograph answer the question, at least for a few million heterosexual males.
The ostensible occasion for Mol's apotheosis then was "two prominent roles" opposite, respectively, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in films directed by John Dahl and Woody Allen. Unfortunately for the former Manhattan coat-check girl, Rounders and Celebrity were critical and commercial bombs, and while Mol went on to do other movies, it seemed she was destined to end up as "the poster child for too much hype too soon," another example of what happens when Hollywood's star-making machinery overheats and burns out.
Except it's not turning out that way. Like two other once-underrated actresses before her -- Jessica Lange and Charlize Theron -- Mol has managed to "take a sad song and make it better," courtesy the life and times of Betty Mae Page, the second of six children born to a Nashville housewife and her auto-mechanic husband, whose semi-nude (and occasionally nude) appearances in such magazines as Wink, Cartoon & Model Parade, Stare, Gaze!, Chicks and Chuckles and Modern Sunbathing earned her an honoured place at the back of Dad's night table during the Eisenhower era.
"I really had to fight to get the part," Mol confessed during an interview at the most recent Toronto International Film Festival, where The Notorious Bettie Page had its world premiere. In one sense, that's understandable: with her wavy blond hair, svelte figure and Nordic cast, Mol at first seems antithetical to the dark-haired, sweetly sassy, voluptuously chunky "Tease from Tennessee."
But when she read the script, co-written by Harron, and heard the real Page's voice in a 1997 TV documentary and then put on a cheap dark wig, she became convinced she could do the part. And she convinced Harron too.
Not that the director, whose credits include I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho, was the one who needed convincing. "Gretchen came into the audition and just had that fifties body language down. I knew she was the one right there," Harron recalled last year. "Because you can't get someone to do a role like Bettie Page. You have to find someone who can do it."
However, what Mol called "the film's money guys" didn't think she was right for the part and urged Harron to keep searching. "So I said, 'Okay, I'll look at all these other people. But Gretchen is my Bettie, and if she gets run over by a bus, I have no second choice.' People would come into the auditions and they were so modern in their body language, in their presentation. Or vampy. I'd have to say, 'People, this is in the past. You have to understand that.' "
Indeed, one of the miracles of Mol's portrayal is the way her body incarnates a pre-Playboy/Linda Lovelace/ How to Make Love Like a Porn Star freshness, exuberance and good humour, whether posing totally naked for a camera club in rural New Jersey or, with whip in hand, donning chains, garters, a black bra and stilettos for a super 88-mm "bondage loop." (Her fee: $10 an hour.)
"There was a lack of shame to Bettie, a lack of self-consciousness," Mol observed. "In a way, she was like a child is before he or she puts clothes on to go into the world. As an actress, I kind of had to go back to it being okay. I think the environment Mary set up was helpful for me to get into that 'Bettie zone.' And it was kind of great, actually."
The real Bettie Page wasn't involved in the making of Harron's film, although the director "did try to get her as a consultant." Her family, however, dissuaded her because years earlier "a lawyer had signed her life rights to someone else and they were afraid she might be sued."
"I still want her to see it," remarked Harron, who was born the year before Page's retirement. "And to see it as a tribute to her, as a very positive portrayal."