http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i68B0b22zMznFrid7XZYaazwOfiQ
American pin-up and culture icon Bettie Page dead at 85
1 hour ago
LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Bettie Page, the bombshell pin-up queen who both titillated and outraged Americans in the 1950s during her career as a model and actress, has died, her agent said. She was 85.
"With deep personal sadness I must announce that my dear friend and client Bettie Page passed away at 6:41pm PST this evening (0241 GMT Friday) in a Los Angeles hospital," her agent Mark Roesler said in a statement.
Page suffered a heart attack nine days earlier and never regained consciousness.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said.
Page combined sweetness and sexuality in a series of now-legendary posters and photographs in the 1950s, including as one of the inaugural centerfolds in Hugh Heffner's new magazine Playboy, which named her "the model of the century".
The nice-naughty image -- a sweet and beguiling smile matched with a curvacious figure and Page's propensity for burlesque films and bondage images -- proved highly combustible on the eve of America's sexual revolution.
In the late 1950s Page became one of the most photographed women in the world, and her guilty-pleasure popularity continued to soar even as she left the limelight nearly half a century ago.