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Original Playboy Model, 85, Dies

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 12, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.

Page suffered a heart attack last week in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, agent Mark Roesler said. She had been hospitalized three weeks with pneumonia.

"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."

Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere.

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

The latter helped contribute to her mysterious disappearance from the public eye for decades, during which she became a born-again Christian in Key West in 1959, worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry and was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia in 1979 and spent 20 months in a state mental hospital.

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

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