Linnea Eleanor "Bunny" Yeager

Early life and career

Linnea Eleanor Yeager was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to Raymond Conrad and Linnea (née Sherlin) Yeager on March 13, 1929. She won numerous local beauty pageants including in rapid succession Queen of Miami, Florida Orchid Queen, Miss Trailercoach of Dade County, Miss Army & Air Force, Miss Personality of Miami Beach, Queen of the Sports Carnival and Cheesecake Queen of 1951. She became a technically skilled photographer known for her early use of the fill flash technique to lighten dark shadows when shooting in bright sun. The most famous images of Page by Yeager include the January 1955 Playboy centerfold in which she kneels wearing only a Santa hat while hanging a silver ornament on a Christmas tree and a series of photographs with a pair of live cheetahs.

Yeager was a very prolific and successful pinup photographer in the 1950s and 1960s, so much so, that her work was described as ubiquitous in that era. She discovered Lisa Winters, the first Playmate of the Year. Yeager also appeared in the magazine as a model five times. In 1998 she stated, "The kind of photographs they wanted was something I wasn't prepared to do." In 1992 Playboy published a retrospective of her work titled "The Bettie Boom". Since 2002, Yeager's work has been exhibited in contemporary art galleries.

In early 2010, The Andy Warhol Museum held the first major museum exhibition of Yeager's work. The exhibit, "The Legendary Queen of the Pin Up", featured her self-portraits, some from her book How I Photograph Myself published by A.S. Barnes & Co. in 1964. "The Fabulous Bunny Yeager" an exhibit in 2011 at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami also featuring self-portraits by Yeager was of photographs that had not been exhibited previously. Included were some images that had not been shown before of models including Bettie Page.

In 2012 Bunny Yeager had two exhibitions in Germany, "Funland" at Gallery Schuster Potsdam and "Femme Fatale" in December 2012 at Gallery Schuster Berlin.

The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale held a 2013 exhibit, "Bunny Yeager: Both Sides of the Camera" featuring her photographs of herself, Page, and model Paz de la Huerta. The Gavlak Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida put on an exhibit, "Bunny Yeager: Selections from How I Photograph Myself" in 2014. The Sin City Gallery in Las Vegas held a posthumous exhibit, "Bunny's Bombshells", from June 5 to .

She had her own studio in the Wynwood Art District of Miami, part of the Center for Visual Communication. There is a "Bunny Yeager Lounge" in Berlin which is open to the public and shows photos, memorabilia and movies. Yeager was also founding editor and publisher of a trade magazine for entertainment professionals, Florida Stage & Screen. She had two daughters, Lisa and Cherilu. She has been cited as influencing many artists and photographers including Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura. Arbus called her, "the world’s greatest pinup photographer." She was also on I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth. In 1968 she played the role of a Swedish masseuse opposite Frank Sinatra in Lady In Cement. She was also featured on a 2006 CNN story about the 60th anniversary of the bikini. In 2005, Cult Epics released the DVD 100 Girls by Bunny Yeager, a documentary with behind-the-scenes footage on Yeager's photo sessions with Page and other pin-up models. Naked Ambition, a 2023 documentary film, describes Yeager's career as pinup girl and photographer, and includes commentary from Dita Von Teese, Bruce Weber, and Larry King.

Books

Filmography

{| class="wikitable"

|-

! Year

! Title

! Role

! Notes

|-

|1963|| Bunny Yeager's Nude Camera || Herself ||

|-

|1963|| Intimate Diary of Artists' Models || Herself ||

|-

|1964|| Bunny Yeager's Nude Las Vegas || Herself ||

|-

|1965|| Nudes on Tiger Reef || Herself ||

|-

|1968|| Lady in Cement || Bunny Fjord - Swedish masseuse || Uncredited

|-

|1984|| Harry & Son || Marina Bar Waitress ||

|}

References

Further reading

  • - a photo feature with a dozen of Yeager's pictures and her commentary.
  • https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/bettie-page-and-bunny-yeager/383783/
  • Exhibitions at Gavlak Gallery
  • Bunny Yeager Studio