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Pin-up beauty Bettie Page, 85, died Thursday at a Los Angeles hospital following a heart attack she suffered nine days ago from which she never recovered.
Renowned for her risqué photos that launched a cult following, Page posed for magazines including Beauty Parade, Twitter and the up and coming Playboyfrom 1951-1957, E! Onlinereported.
Page’s agent Mark Roesler said that she had been hospitalized for pneumonia for three weeks before suffering the heart attack that proved fatal.
With her trademark brunette hair and cut that became known as a Bettie Page cut and her fetish clothing and props, Page became a mega-star as a pin-up. Hugh Hefner named her Playboy’s Playmate of the month for January 1955.
Roesler posted a message on Page’s websitefollowing her passing.
"With deep personal sadness I must announce that my dear friend and client Bettie Page passed away at 6:41pm PST this evening in a Los Angles hospital. She died peacefully but had never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack nine days ago,” he wrote.
Born and raised in Nashville Page was called to testify before Congress in an investigation of the perversity of photographs for which she posed. While she never took the stand, many of the negatives of her photos were destroyed during the proceedings, E! Online reported.
Page led a quiet life throughout most of her life beginning in 1959 after she’d suffered a nervous breakdown. She subsequently became a born-again Christian.
Her life was depicted in the 2006 biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, directed by Mary Harron, written by Harron and Guinevere Turner and starring Gretchen Mol as Page.
“She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality. She is the embodiment of beauty,” her agent Roesler wrote on her site after her passing.
