Bettie Page: pin-up queen had numerous behavioral indications of alcoholism.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Pinup queen Bettie Page, dead at 85. Page was famous for the some 20,000 photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957 and for being one of the first centerfolds in a nascent Playboy Magazine (winking under a Santa Claus cap in the January 1955 issue). According to Page, her father, an auto mechanic, “molested all three of his daughters.” There are several clues in her life story suggestive of the idea that she inherited her father’s exceedingly likely alcoholism. First, at 37, she abruptly stopped posing and immersed herself in Bible studies, soon serving as a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade. She was married and divorced three times and, after divorcing her third husband at age 58, plunged into a depression marked by violent mood swings and culminating in an attack against her landlady with a knife. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, she pled innocent by reason of insanity and was sentenced to 10 years in a California mental institution.
A system I proposed in “Drunks, Drugs & Debits” requires that we increase or decrease the odds of alcoholism based on observable behaviors. In the United States, the overall odds of alcoholism are about 10%. Since the odds in someone molesting his daughters are 80% and the likelihood of inheriting alcoholism is roughly 40%, we can instantly up the odds to, say, 30%. We can probably increase the odds by another 10-20% based on the fact that few non-addicted women pose in the nude for years before suddenly immersing themselves in religion. We don’t have statistics on thrice-divorced people, but the odds of alcoholism in someone divorced four times are about 85%. I figure before we even get to the depression, mood swings, attack and mental diagnosis, we can safely ascribe a 60-80% probability of alcoholism.
Alcoholism often mimics personality disorders and alcoholics are often misdiagnosed as having such disorders. One recovering alcoholic, whose story is recounted in “Drunks, Drugs & Debits,” was psychiatrist Martha Morrison, who was variously diagnosed with paranoia, schizophrenia, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychosis and catatonia. Another was actress Francis Farmer, who was tragically committed to an insane asylum and given a lobotomy before dying at age 57. She was diagnosed with mostly the same disorders, despite being drunk at work and experiencing repeated arrests for drunken brawls and drunk driving. To the best of my knowledge, none of the professionals treating either of these women diagnosed alcoholism.
When Page was released in 1992, she found that her early lack of inhibition had earned her cult-like status. Although we may never get absolute confirmation, the fact that Page acted in ways that were reckless given the era, as well as crazed, points to alcoholism as by far the best explanation for the seeming contradictions in her life.