Pin-Up Legend, Bettie Page Dies

LOS ANGELESBettie Page, a 1950s pinup model who helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, has died. She was 85.

Her agent Mark Roesler says Page died Thursday night at a Los Angeles hospital after suffering a heart attack nine days ago. He says she never regained consciousness.

Page attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls across the country.

 Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.

After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.

"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."

Roesler says Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia and was about to be released when she suffered the heart attack Dec. 2.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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