Bettie Page, the bombshell pin-up queen who both titillated and outraged Americans during her legendary career as a model and actress in the 1950s, has died at the age of 85.

Page never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack last week in Los Angeles, said her agent, Mark Roesler. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.

“She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality,” Mr 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, where they remained for years.

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

“I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society,” Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press. “She was a very dear person.”

Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, when she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.

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

“I don't want to be photographed in my old age,” she told an interviewer in 1998. “I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young.”

The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, websites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.

Gretchen Mol portrayed her in the 2005 film The Notorious Bettie Page; and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's Bettie Page: Dark Angel. Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary Betty Page: Pinup Queen.

Mr Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of The Notorious Bettie Page at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as “notorious,” but: “we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie.”

Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.

Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: “I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous.”

Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: “God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds.”

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