Bettie Page Pioneered Coming to Miami and Posing Nude

Yesterday America lost its original X-rated superstar in celebrated pin-up girl Bettie Page.

Bettie wasn't born a superstar. She started life as a good girl in Tennessee and was salutatorian of her class. At age 20, she married a high school classmate and lived for a short time in Miami. She divorced a couple of years later and began a modeling career. Not until she met Miami-based photographer Bunny Yeager, a pin-up model in her own right, did Page catapult into superstardom.
She had done pin-up work earlier with Jerry Tibbs, but Yeager met Page in Miami in 1954 and took the photos of her at Africa USA in Boca Raton. Those shots made their way to Hugh Hefner, who published them in one of the earliest editions of Playboy. The rest, they say, is history, and the proud tradition of coming to South Florida and taking your clothes off for the camera continues today.

After retiring from modeling, Page lived in Florida during parts of her life, though she ultimarely settled in L.A. Yeager continues to operate a photo studio in Miami.

-- Kyle Munzenrieder