Bettie Page Dies At 85

“I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2006. “I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people’s perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form.”

Bettie Page’s agent announced today that the 50’s pin up star who was visual viagra for all our Grandpa’s, died today from complications of a heart attack. Bettie was hospitalized three weeks ago for pneumonia, but on December 2nd had a heart attack and slipped into a coma.

It’s sad to see Bettie go, but her life came full circle and what a life it was. She rose to fame in the 50’s as a naughty bondage girl with black sharp bangs, posing tied up or spanking other girls. Bettie Page was probably just looking to make a buck but before disappearing she pushed America into the sexual revolution of the 60’s and left her mark on our cult psyche.

In 1957, at the height of her fame, she disappeared, and for three decades her private life — two failed marriages, a fight against poverty and mental illness, resurrection as a born-again Christian, years of seclusion in Southern California — was a mystery to all but a few close friends.

Then in the late 1980s and early ’90s, she was rediscovered and a Bettie Page renaissance began. David Stevens, creator of the comic-book and later movie character the Rocketeer, immortalized her as the Rocketeer’s girlfriend. Fashion designers revived her look. Uma Thurman, in bangs, reincarnated Bettie in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” and Demi Moore, Madonna and others appeared in Page-like photos.-NYT

Thank you Bettie Page.

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