When a 1957 police drug raid on a Harlem apartment turned up a cache of obscene magazines and photos, paddles, a riding crop, a whip, and lengths of chain, rawhide, and rope, FBI agents contacted Page for some expert guidance. Specifically, they wanted to know if the apartment was a photo studio where obscene material was produced. According to the below memo sent to Hoover, Page told investigators that she “had never heard of that type of photography being made in Harlem.” An agent reported that Page also advised that the “flagellation and bondage pictures that she had posed for” were shot “in photographic studios or photographers apartments.”
The seized porn, which included “two books and four pictures depicting Betty Page in various poses,” was shipped to Washington for “examination” by the FBI Laboratory, according to a second memo. At some point, agents planned to quiz the apartment’s inhabitants about “what the source of these items was, and to what use they were putting them to.”
See the documents
No comments:
Post a Comment