Bunny Yeager's Nude Las Vegas (1963) Poster

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Bunny Yeager!
BandSAboutMovies23 March 2021
Warning: Spoilers
You know, this movie isn't very good, but I just want to talk about Bunny Yeager, so indulge me.

Linnea Eleanor "Bunny" Yeager was born in Wilkinsburg, one of the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and moved to Florida when she was 17. There, she got the nickname she'd use for the rest of her life. It either came from Lana Turner's character Bunny Smith in Week-End at the Waldorf or because Yeager played the Easter Bunny in a school play.

Just a few years out of school, Bunny won plenty of beauty pageants, including Miss Army & Air Force, Miss Personality of Miami Beach, Queen of Miami, Florida Orchid Queen, Miss Trailercoach of Dade County, Queen of the Sports Carnival and Cheesecake Queen of 1951.

She never wore the same outfit twice and made plenty of the clothes that other girls wore for their shoots. She's even been credited with being one of the influencers that made the bikini a hot number in the mid 50's.

Originally, Bunny went to school to be a photographer so she could save money and make her own prints. However, one of her class projects ended up being the March 1954 cover of Eye magazine and she went pro. Bunny was one of the first photographers to shoot girls in natural light.

She's probably best known for popularizing Bettie Page (she shot her January 1955 Playboy centerfold) and her work in Playboy, including discovering the very first centerfold, Lisa Winters. She also appeared in the magazine herself five times and was photographed by Hugh Hefner in a pictorial named "Queen of the Playboy Centerfolds."

Once sexy movies got more gynecological, Yeager moved into mainstream magazines and even took the famous photo of Ursula Andress in her white bikini from the set of Dr. No.

Before the sexual revolution, Bunny Yeager was working within the male gaze to be a trailblazer. She's one of my heroines and deserves so much more credit and interest than now. Check out her photos today and you'll see imagery that remains incredibly alive.

As for the movie, there's no story, it's just Bunny taking photos of girls and it will make you sad, because it's shot in the wonderful old Las Vegas, filled with neon and tiki bars and everything magical that the world threw away.
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Pleasant, weak excuse to give 'em some skin
lor_29 May 2015
This followup by Barry Mahon and photographer Bunny Yeager to their NUDE CAMERA picture is pleasant enough - a crypto-documentary (with fake storyline) of Bunny's craft. The gentleman's agreement between filmmaker and his Adult cinema audience permits minimalism to prevail, as long as the requisite quantity and quality of topless footage of figure models is delivered.

It's really a testament to film's continuum - this soft-core porn is on the same time line as the breakthrough indie projects of that era by John Cassavetes, with his frequent collaborator Al Ruban having an acting role here as well as serving as sound man. I recently binged on a dozen-plus episodes of Cassavetes' better- in-my-memory (than reality) '50s jazz detective (!) TV series "Johnny Staccato" and was surprised to see many elements of sexploitation cinema (heavily watered down) pop up on the show!

Here we have Bunny and her husband Bud Irwin taking a vacation in Las Vegas, leaving their (and director Mahon's) stomping grounds of southern Florida behind. Slim premise has work intruding when she gets a big-$ offer from a mag publisher to come up with an elaborate but "I need it yesterday" photo spread, so she whips into action rounding up models and treating us to some attractive locations surrounding Vegas as well as the expected nudie footage..

To keep the pot boiling there's a local guide and wise guy Charlie to show her around town, and a corny gimmick of model Peggy Pepper racking up gambling debts which her husband doesn't know about, and kindly Bunny arranging to pay them off via Peggy's modeling earnings over the weekend.

A few Mahon regulars like one of the popular Bennett sisters show up, but otherwise the film is short on real talent. Mahon's filming technique is minimalist as usual and he blows the final scene by having casino noise drown out much of Peggy's summation speech.

Staring at topless shots of women never goes out of style, but this film is hardly relevant anymore, and frankly too boring to have withstood the test of time.
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