Naked Ambition explores the life and extraordinary career of Bunny Yeager, the woman who brought Bettie Page to mainstream notoriety, and snapped playful yet sexy cheesecake pictures that appeared in photography magazines and Playboy in the 1950s and 1960s.
Buy Bunny Yeager’s Pin-Up Girls of the 1950sThrough ample news clippings, still photos, and a treasure trove of film clips from Yeager’s personal and professional life, the filmmakers unravel the ups and downs of the photographer’s life (and in some ways, a brief history of photography and social mores in the late 20th Century). There’s a short film snippet of her giving instructions to models, and clips from a few vintage TV show appearances, including What’s My Line? Unfortunately, there aren’t any substantive sit-down interview clips from her heyday. Women like Bunny were treated like a novelty or an oddity back then. Short, sweet PR appearances seemed to be the norm at the time. She seems like such an indefatigable force of nature, it would be interesting to hear her talk about her work and the characters and obstacles she encountered in real time.
After winning a local beauty pageant in Florida, Yeager did some modeling. but eventually branched out into photography. She took what she knew about modeling and used it to make the process easier for the subject and photographer, not to mention easier on the viewer’s eyes.
Throughout the early 1950s, she took cheesecake (aka bikini or tastefully topless/nude) photos of models, mainly on the beach. The women responded well to her tutelage, since she had to perform the same unnatural poses and twists and turns when she modeled. Her subjects responded with shots that were not only sexy, but joyful. The women in Yeager’s photos seem happy to be there, not merely posing for money and/or kicks. You can sense the camaraderie in the short clips of Yeager taking photos of her beauties.
Yeager’s photos first appeared in camera magazines. These magazines, the precursors to Playboy, catered to men looking for sexy pics of women under the guise of an interest in photography. (Bettie Page got her start in these magazines.)
Dubbed the world’s prettiest photographer, Yeager was much more than a pretty face. As a photographer, she pioneered the fill flash technique to lighten deep shadows in photos. She took plenty of sexy selfies with film cameras, long before social media made it di rigueur. As a stylist, she helped bring the bikini to public consciousness, and even designed and sewed many of the bikinis she wore. (Most of her cheesecake pics were taken in the ‘50s and early ‘60s when one-piece swimsuits were the norm.)
Hugh Hefner hired Yeager to photograph Page and other Playmates. Yeager herself occasionally appeared in the magazine’s pictorials. Hefner speaks glowingly of Yeager in a few archival interview clips.
Bunny’s feisty personality was evident in the way she conducted business, not just in her creativity. She complained when her contracts with Hefner started to undercut her interests, and turned down a meeting with Diane Arbus. She didn’t slow down when she put her cameras away for the night, either. Unsurprisingly, she socialized with the more famous denizens of the Miami Beach scene of the time, including Sammy Davis Jr. and Larry King.
Interviews with Yeager’s daughters provide the crux of the documentary. Despite their Mom’s risqué chosen profession, the girls grew up in a typical mid-century household – Mom and Dad took lots of photos at Christmas and Easter and at the wading pool during summer vacation. Bunny kept her bohemian lifestyle (mostly) hidden from her children. Eventually, her daughters discovered their Mom took racy pictures. One daughter didn’t care; the other seemed embarrassed by her Mom’s exploits.
Yeager hit hard times in the last few decades of her life, as she resorted to everything from graphic design to singing in nightclubs to support herself. The Bettie Page/rockabilly revival of the ‘90s brought her photos back into the pop-culture narrative, and she even reconnected with Bettie after several decades.
We see Yeager briefly near the end of the film, at a gallery opening and reliving her modeling days in a photo shoot by a young fan/visual artist. She passed away in 2014. Yeager’s daughters eventually sold her extensive catalog, which includes boxes and boxes of as yet unseen negatives and photos.
If you didn’t know her full history, Yeager might seem like a footnote to Bettie Page’s story, but once Naked Ambition gives Bunny her due, you see her as so much more than a pretty ex-model who took cheesecake photos. She was somewhat of a Renaissance woman whose talent and drive transcended the societal barriers of Mid-Century America.
Naked Ambition, directed by Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch, was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Cleveland International Film Festival. (Tabsch directed 2020’s Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado.)
