To be fair, it was before my time, too, but her images are timeless.
She was the pin-up queen of the 1950's. She became famous posing nude for gentlemen's "camera clubs" in NYC in the 1950's, but her popularity exploded across the country when she appeared on innumerable magazine covers and cheesecake postcards. The photographer Irving Klaw made a huge killing selling bondage photos of her through the mail, which led to a series of hearings about immorality before the U.S. Senate in 1957, where she was compelled to testify. Shortly thereafter, she vanished without a trace. She became a legend, and her "look" became an indelible part of American sexual iconography forever.
A reporter managed to track her down in 1997. She was living in California, unaware that she had become a cult icon.
