[lbo-talk] Bettie Page RIP (1923 - 2008)

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 11 22:37:17 PST 2008


[I have a somewhat small collection of Page stuff. She's from Nashville, TN like me. She also had a B.A. from Peabody College, since subsumed into Vanderbilt. And yet Peabody/Vanderbilt do not list her among heir notable alumni. Boo. -B.]

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.



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