A Southern girl from Nashville, Tennessee, Bettie Page was perhaps the most famous men's magazine pin-up of all time, a charming, lively model who epitomized the decade's delicate balance of naughty and nice. In an era of platinum blondes and maxed-out figures, Page was an anachronism, slim and innocently alluring even in the most sexually outrageous contexts.

With her kittenish demeanor, nearly perfect body and little-girl ink-black bangs, Page made her start as a model for Irving Klaw's fetish magazines and no-budget films that featured Page in a variety of kinky activities, including bondage and spanking. Her films may not have graced the screens of Fifties movie palaces, but her face and form were familiar to every red-blooded male who attended a bachelor party or movie night at the local lodge. Innocent by modern standards, Page's movie loops were a taste of sin in a world of cinematic white bread.

"From the first time I posed nude, I wasn't embarrassed," Page once quipped, and that lack of self-consciousness comes through in Page's January 1955 Playboy spread. The typically coquettish Page wore a Santa's hat and a wink; she was photographed by Page's frequent collaborator, Miami photographer Bunny Yeager (who sold that shot of Page decorating a Christmas tree to Hugh Hefner for $100). "I still believe she was the best pin-up glamour model who ever lived," Yeager said of her collaboration with Page.

Though principally remembered for the striptease films like Teaserama, Varietease and Strip-O-Rama she made for Klaw, Page's biggest movie role did not actually feature the original perky bad girl. The 1991 family action film The Rocketeer, based on artist Dave Stevens' comic book, instead featured actress Jennifer Connelly as a tribute to Stevens' pin-up idol. Page's most lasting mark may be felt in the host of movie actresses -- including Rose McGowan, Uma Thurman, Debi Mazar and Patricia Arquette -- who have channeled a little bit of Bettie, riffing on her coquettish sex appeal and indigo hair. Page told Karen Essex, author of Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend, of her greatest regret: "I wish I had been a movie star." While Page never made a mark in Hollywood, her reputation has created hundreds of ripples in the entertainment industry and the culture at large.