Original subtitles

(pages flapping)

(gentle music)

(pleasant music)

♪ I started out to go to Cuba ♪

♪ I landed in Miami Beach ♪

♪ It's not so very far from Cuba ♪

♪ And oh what a rumba they teach ♪

(upbeat music)

[Larry] My first national talk show started in Miami.

From the sun and fun capital of the world,

this is "The Larry King Show."

Miami Beach fermented everything for me.

Bunny Yeager came on my show a few times, I interviewed her.

She was special.

(pleasant music)

How many beautiful girls do you know

who could have been a major model, movie star?

How many do you know would be a photographer of pinup girls?

- She didn't really get the credit she deserved.

- She was so far ahead of her time.

- The work that she did paved the way for me

to be able to do what I do now.

- In photographing herself,

she found incredible empowerment.

- She should be woven into the narrative of art history

because she deserved to be.

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

(pleasant music continues)

(pleasant music continues)

(pleasant music continues)

(bright music)

- [Sarahjane] In the 1940s,

Bunny Yeager starts out as a model.

- [Dian] She was photographed by a lot of photographers,

she got into all the magazines.

But then she got an interest in taking pictures herself.

- [Christie] She thought men are getting paid for this,

so why shouldn't I?

- [Ed] And for whatever reason, right from the beginning,

she was shooting great work.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music continues)

Bunny used to work every year with a guy named Roy Penny.

- [Carlos] He was the one that identified her

as the world's prettiest, most beautiful photographer.

(upbeat music)

- [Ed] And that storyline became the cover

of "US Camera" in 1953.

- [Sarahjane] She was also one of the world's

hardest working photographers,

one of the world's most successful photographers,

one of the world's most daring photographers.

And one of the things that I think

really is classic Bunny is that she took it,

and she ran with it.

(upbeat music)

- [Dita] I really love the pictures of Bunny Yeager as a

model when she was super platinum blonde.

I love those pictures.

I think it's so important that she was like

a bombshell pinup girl.

It really made all the difference

in how she photographed other people.

- [Sarahjane] There's always been lots of

different ways to take a photograph.

There's photographs that are about showing you

on your best day, and then a tiny bit better.

That's what Bunny's photographs were.

(pleasant music)

- She could take a relatively plain looking young woman,

and she'd get the greatest photo she ever took in her life.

She just would transform them.

- Everything in Bunny's photographs

was pretty much calculated.

- [Bunny] Her hair and complexion were so delicate,

it was difficult to control the lighting ratio in the sun.

- [Carlos] Like she said, there was a reason to her madness.

- [Bunny] I wanted to shoot her this way

because in a natural setting,

she would be far more outstanding.

- [Carlos] She will take notes prior to assembling

a story for a photograph.

- She had incredibly high standards,

and she worked incredibly fast.

- That's one of my favorite things about working

with former models that are also photographers.

They know how they wanna be seen.

They know that they wanna be shown in their best light

and their most beautiful, their most sexy.

They want their flaws disguised,

they want their assets amplified.

(pleasant music)

- [ASL Interpreter] I remember watching my mom mimic

the face poses that she wanted the models to have.

It was fascinating.

- If her model could arch her back in a specific way,

she was gonna arch her back to 110%.

- What better homework could there be than Bunny Yeager

being a pinup model herself?

So she could say like, "Yeah, I know that's killing

your back right now, yes, I know it feels unnatural,

but we are gonna get a beautiful shot."

That's something that not just anybody can convey.

- [Ed] She had just this incredible skill

for finding models, and convincing them to work with her.

'Cause that's, you know, that's the key,

especially when you're doing nude photography.

(pleasant music)

- If a man or woman walked around a neighborhood,

knocked on a door today and said, "Hey, hi,

I'm so and so, I am a photographer, would you pose nude?

They'd slam the door and call the police?

- Look, Terry, let me talk frankly with you.

You and I could make a lot of money together.

- You mean by me posing nude for you?

- What's wrong with that? You've seen my pictures.

- But Bunny specifically picks people

because they have a sparkle in their eyes,

because they have something in their personality

that she thinks she can get across.

- Bunny always knew how to identify

a particular face, a Bunny girl

like Bruce Weber used to say,

"I can spot a Bunny girl in the supermarket."

- She has that swagger, you know?

She has that life in herself, you know?

That kind of fearless, like, I don't care

what you think of me, I'm just being myself.

- I won the scholarship to Cornett Model Agency,

and that's how I started modeling

for Burdines in the tea room.

I modeled for Emilio Pucci,

who's very famous now, he's dead, but...

I think we got something like $25,

or $30 for a fashion show,

and like $12 for the fitting.

You had to go, you know, before and fit into your clothes.

My first shoot with Bunny,

I was living on Rivo Alto Island,

and I think we went somewhere in my neighborhood.

- [Interviewer] Did you feel like when you did that,

it was a brave thing to do?

- No, I thought it was just earning money.

(pleasant music)

- Depending on your looks

for a living is intimidating.

I wouldn't be caught dead

going out to get the mail without my makeup.

I enjoyed getting the paycheck every time,

and it was very much needed.

I was supporting my mother and myself,

and had a household to take care of.

- I've looked at a lot of pinup photography in my life,

and the thing that I've noticed about the photos

Bunny Yeager took of her models

is that you see so much of their personality.

- There's something inherently female

about the way that she looks at her subjects,

and you can feel it reflected back at you,

because the models, they don't look as much like objects.

- She's a friend and you see that in the pictures,

the way that the women really trusted her,

and were hungry for a friendship, you know?

(pleasant music)

- A lot of these models in a million years

wouldn't have worked with a male photographer.

- People really responded to her, she had a big personality,

and she made people feel like they were a part of her world

as soon as they came in.

(upbeat music)

- She knew how to pose,

and she knew just how you were feeling.

If you felt awkward or something, she'd say,

"Well, relax just a little bit and try this or try that."

You just felt like you were with a girlfriend, actually.

- That was fun,

and I think I looked like I was having fun.

She was easy to work for in that way,

talking to you and making you laugh and putting you at ease.

Bunny was unique in the sense

that she was doing, well, cheesecake photography.

I mean, a lot of those pictures,

for the 50s, we're talking risque.

She always seemed to wanna pull it down

a little bit on the side, or...

Compared to now, they look like, you know, Mickey Mouse.

(pleasant music)

I don't really remember this picture at all looking at it.

There was a chalks on a sea plane,

but I do remember Bunny was very creative finding locations.

(bright music)

- So the 1950s gives us both this virginal view

of the woman as domestic goddess,

but also this kind of wellspring of teenage rebellion.

For women like Bunny Yeager,

for women like Marilyn Monroe,

you find that they're really willing

to put themselves out there, and exploit and explore

that friction, that space.

- My name is Christy Strong, and I'm the granddaughter

of Maria Stinger, who was one of Bunny Yeager's best friends

and biggest models back in the day.

(pleasant music)

Maria was known as being Miami's Marilyn.

She won Marilyn Monroe lookalike contests,

she was in calendars, she was on the cover of magazines.

Bunny was really the one that blew her up.

And what she loved about Maria is that Maria had no fear.

(pleasant music)

- [Sarahjane] Maria Stinger was a handful,

Maria Stinger was Bunny's best friend.

Maria Stinger had a smile that could get anyone in trouble.

- One of my favorite set of photos that bunny took

of my grandmother was at Africa USA,

which at the time in Miami was this safari theme park.

(pleasant music)

There's no fear in my grandmother's eyes.

She looks gorgeous, they're having a wonderful time.

Those were the first set of pictures

that Bunny professionally sold.

(pleasant music)

- I did know Maria Stinger a little bit.

I remember us going over to their house one time

and me playing with her daughters.

- [ASL Interpreter] I do remember meeting

one of the models, Maria Stinger.

I didn't know who she was at that time or what her name is,

but she was always very good to me.

- When I was in my early teens, I started to ask

more questions about who my grandmother was.

(upbeat music)

My family was kind of almost afraid

of what they would find if they dug too deeply

into my grandmother's life and work.

My grandmother was basically an exhibitionist.

Bunny talks about how she didn't have a lot of women friends

back in the day.

She used to like to tease my grandmother and say,

"Maria, just, you know, take off your shirt."

"Come on, you know you want to."

And then inevitably, she'd always take off her shirt.

Really, it was this like fun,

playful dynamic they had together.

(upbeat music)

(pleasant music)

♪ I saw the capercaillie play today ♪

- I think you can see how daring Bunny Yeager

was as a photographer from her earliest days

by the locations she was choosing.

She would photograph models nude on the beach

early in the morning.

She would get access to amusement parks, like Playland.

Her first published photograph was taken

at a wild animal park.

She would ask her friends for use of their mansions,

and she would even film people nude

in front of her Christmas tree.

- As soon as Bunny started taking pictures,

every magazine wanted to have her stuff in there.

- Bunny gave cache to magazines.

If you published Bunny Yeager photographs,

not only were you getting great photos,

you were also getting to say that you were getting photos

by Bunny Yeager, the world's prettiest photographer.

- She understood what the magazines wanted,

and what was commercial.

- [Sarahjane] She was able to take the fact that she was working

both in front of and behind the camera,

and turn that into a brand.

- Not many people are on both sides of the camera,

and Bunny was on both sides of the camera.

- Smile, sparkle.

Good.

All right, let's try something

with your arms around your head.

- You're one of the world's foremost photographers

of women, is this a good job?

I'm not trying to play income tax man now,

but do you make a good living out of it?

- Well, I make a nice living, but the big thing

about it for me is I'm married and I have two children.

And I can make my own hours,

and still indulge in having a career.

♪ In my life ♪

♪ I met a beauty without bounds ♪

- Dad talked about it a lot, how special she was.

I remember him always telling me,

"Your mom's not like other moms, just being a housewife

and sitting around eating Bonbons."

"She's working, she's a photographer."

- Bunny was the most famous female photographer in America.

- Bunny Yeager, is that right?

(audience applauding)

Miss or Mrs Yeager?

- Actually, it's Mrs.

Mrs. Yeager, where are you from Mrs. Yeager?

- Miami, Florida.

- Miami, Florida. Lucky Florida.

All right, panel, you all masked up?

Let's have a look at everybody here and abouts,

except those four good characters over there on the panel

know exactly what your line is.

(audience gasping)

(audience applauding)

- One of the factors that really influenced the shape

of Bunny's career was how much of an outsider she was.

- John, it's all too obvious. Mrs. Yeager is from Miami.

She's not sunburned, she's a beautiful blonde.

She's obviously a typical American school teacher.

One down and nine to go.

- She was an outsider

because she was a self-taught photographer,

she was an outsider because she was a woman.

She was an outsider because she lived in Miami,

which was not a center of publishing.

- Mrs. Yeager, do you deal in services?

- [Bunny] Yes, I do.

- Mrs. Yeager once was on the other side of the camera,

but for the last four years, she's been a photographer.

- She was an original,

and she epitomized in a sense

what Miami Beach was in the '50s and '60s,

booming, loose, devil may care,

let it all happen.

(pleasant music)

I had just started radio and I was doing a morning show.

And one day the general manager called me in and said,

"The all night guy, Al Fox, is sick,

would you sit in overnight?"

- It's "The Witching Hour,"

Miami Beach's Midnight Flyer program, we're underway.

- He says, "All you do is just play records and talk."

- Miami Beach Midnight Flyer-

This is not a Bunny Yeager story.

But I'm alone in the station

and about 3:00 a.m. the phone rings.

(phone ringing)

And I pick up the phone, "WAHR,"

and this voice, I can hear it now,

said, "I want you."

(pleasant music)

I'm 22 years old, no woman has ever said,

"I want you," to me.

I suddenly realized there were other advantages

to being on the radio.

♪ Really love me ♪

I said, "Well, I get off at six."

She says, "No, I go to work at six,

the only time is now."

♪ Did you ever really miss me ♪

So what the audience heard was,

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have a real treat for you tonight."

You're gonna hear the entire Harry Belafonte

and Carnegie Hall album," which took 23 minutes,

which is all the time I needed.

♪ Down the way where the nights are gay ♪

♪ And the sun shines ♪

- I put the record on, zoomed over to the house.

I open up the door, there's this lady,

I never saw her clear, white negligee sitting on the couch,

opens her arms, I jump into her arms.

My right cheek is against her right cheek,

Belafonte is on the radio, and I hear

♪ Down the way where the knights ♪

♪ Where the knights ♪

The record gets stuck.

I place her back on the couch, go to my car,

Jewish masochism, I leave the radio on.

We enter the station,

all the lights are ringing, the phones.

I'm picking them up, I'm apologizing to people.

I'm sweating, the last phone call

was an older Jewish man and I said, "Hello."

And he said, "Where the nights, where the nights."

"I'm going crazy with where the nights."

So I said to him, "Why didn't you just change the station?"

And he said, "I'm an invalid, and I'm in bed all night

and a nurse takes care of me."

"And when she leaves, she sets the radio

on top of the wardrobe set to your station,

I can't get up and change it."

(pleasant music)

I said, "I deeply apologize. Can I do anything for you?"

He said, "Yeah, play Hava Nagila."

(upbeat music)

There was nothing like Miami Beach, nothing like it.

It was hard in Miami, Miami Beach,

to take anything really seriously.

(pleasant jazz music)

People got married, got divorced, nothing was forever.

(pleasant jazz music)

It was a loose, by a loose town,

I mean it was a very sexually liberated city.

(pleasant jazz music)

- [Ed] Bunny Met Sammy Davis Jr. in 1955.

Imagine, this is segregated Miami.

Sammy couldn't even stay on Miami Beach

past six o'clock at night.

- Bunny tells this great story about

how she picked Sammy up in the car and Sammy said,

"I have to get in the back seat."

I don't know if Bunny was naive at the time,

but that was just absurd to her

because Sammy was such a huge celebrity.

He still wasn't comfortable riding in the front seat

with a blonde white woman in Miami at the time.

- He would go off during the day

with Bunny and photograph models,

both of them taking a risk at that time.

- They would photograph pictures

of my grandmother, Maria, together.

- They hit it off and she gave him lessons

on how to pose models.

- [Carlos] They photographed together

behind her favorite photo shooting place,

which was the abandoned mansion of the Firestones,

which is actually where the Fontainebleau is now.

(pleasant music)

- So there was a night that Bunny and Bud

and Sammy Davis Jr. came over to my grandparents' house.

It goes beyond just a couple of couples

hanging out and having fun.

(pleasant music)

They all felt comfortable just hanging around,

you know, my grandmother's nude.

It's just like nobody cares.

- Bunny was straight in that world.

She very much embraced the notion that being a sexual woman

gave you an entree into this highly sophisticated society.

(pleasant music)

- Bunny really kind of skirted two worlds.

In fact, you look at some of her books from the 50s

and she'll have the nice girl next door.

And the next page, it'll be a burlesque performer

that was over at Plus Pigalle on the beach.

(pleasant music)

- You know, I grew up in a farming town in Michigan.

I'm a natural dishwater blonde,

not very glamorous, kind of very ordinary looking,

and I wanted to be the opposite of what I was.

I wanted to be like a Hollywood movie star.

18 years old, and went to a place in Anaheim,

and walked into this little like blacked out windowed store

and it was a fetish store, and it was just like filled with,

you know, everything you could imagine.

And obviously, a completely different world for me.

(upbeat music)

That's where I saw my first picture of Bettie Page.

There wasn't really anybody

that was trying to be the new Bettie Page,

so that was kind of the thing that sparked my career.

- That never ending appeal of Bettie Page is,

how can someone be so sexy and so innocent at the same time?

(pleasant music)

♪ I'm gonna take my time ♪

Bettie Page was a young woman in the 50s,

who moved to New York with big aspirations

of maybe being an actress or a model.

And ended up being in camera clubs,

which were these sort of private pervy clubs

where men came to photograph for their photography classes.

But, you know, it was women in their underwear

in people's living rooms.

Bettie was an underground hit.

♪ Take my chance to see you swim and dance ♪

♪ Make a old man blush ♪

- The sorts of magazines that Bettie Page

became famous with would be kind of covered

in brown paper wrappers, sold behind the counter,

and you theoretically had to be of a certain age to buy.

I think some people are familiar with Bettie's pinup images,

and then there's the bondage stuff

from like the Claw Studios.

But if you dig even deeper, it gets much racier than that.

- It's so funny that what were considered

some of the raciest images of the time,

that you had to know a guy who knew a guy,

and then you had to get in the mail in a brown envelope,

were made by a group of people who in no way

was this titillating to them.

They didn't even really understand

it on any sexuality level.

This was business. There are guys who will pay money

to get special boots made, and for women to just do

something really specific, like dance around

with this little stuffed clown.

(upbeat music)

- [Ed] Bettie came down in 1954 on a vacation.

There was someone in New York that Bunny had worked with

who told her about Bettie, and they connected that way.

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

The first shoot she did was at a studio

where she just had a ordinary backdrop.

(pleasant music)

The second shoot was at Africa USA.

♪ I declare sure enough ♪

♪ I'm a hot mama ♪

♪ I know about me ♪

- [Bettie] I tried to tell Bunny, I said,

"Bunny, I've got circles under my eyes and I feel terrible."

I said, "I don't feel like posing."

She says, "Bettie, I had to pay money to Little Africa

to use it this morning," she said, "We have to do it today."

The most popular pictures ever taken of me

wearing that leopard outfit, and you can see circles,

deep circles under my eyes.

♪ Yeah I'm warning all you chicks ♪

- And those are the images she sent to Playboy.

Playboy sent back a response saying, "We love these,

but we only use indoor photographs for our centerfolds."

"Can you shoot her indoors?"

♪ Hot mama ♪

And that's what she did, she went and she photographed her

with the Christmas tree and the Christmas hat.

And that became the January 55 centerfold,

and they both became famous.

- [Bettie] I didn't know that Bunny Yeager was gonna send

pictures to Mr. Hefner for "Playboy Magazine."

I look like I've got a saggy, there's just one breast

showing in the picture, you know?

That little Santa Claus hat and I'm winking,

with a little Christmas tree ball covering you know where.

(gentle music)

- Being in Playboy at that moment was kind of it,

if you were the kind of model who took her clothes off.

- Bettie Page would not have received the kind of accolades

and star quality that stayed with her forever

without appearing in the pages of Playboy.

And, of course, Bunny made her a celebrity.

(pleasant music)

- The collaboration of Bettie Page and Bunny Yeager

changed both of their lives.

Before working with Bunny Yeager,

Bettie Page was considered a fetish model,

it had very little to do with celebrating Bettie Page.

Bunny Yeager celebrated Bettie Page.

- My favorite pictures of Bettie are the ones of her

surrounded by the lush foliage.

It was always sort of like a playful

sense of herself in those images.

That's one of the things I loved about her,

and I think that made her so memorable.

Not the nudity aspect, but the fact that everything she did

was sort of in a light, playful manner,

and she made it all seem fun.

(pleasant music)

- For all of Bunny's photos, I find that there's a kind

of joyousness to them, a celebratory quality.

- That attitude in the 1950s was unthinkable,

and approaching it with that kind of innocence

is one of the common connections

that Marilyn Monroe shares with Bettie Page.

(pleasant music)

- A flood tide of filth is engulfing our country

in the form of newsstand obscenity.

- That is directly responsible for a substantial amount

of juvenile delinquency and child crime.

- This continues to increase for one reason,

it is big business.

(pleasant music)

- You're really looking at a choice that women were making

to get involved with pinup photography at the time.

That was a lot more complicated than just,

I'm willing to take my clothes off

in front of a camera, yes or no.

(pleasant music)

Playboy was this magazine that, sure it was about sex,

but it was also about jazz and it was about fashion,

and it was about who you should think

the cool new writers are.

- The names of the writers that came to us as a result

of their wanting to appear in our pages,

there was no other magazine at the time

with that kind of a mix.

First issue came out in December of 1953,

and we sold out.

And then we proceeded to staff up.

- And then we started purchasing from independent

photographers before we began shooting our own,

and it was how I became familiar with Bunny Yeager.

And Bunny Yeager then became a regular contributor

to Playboy and a good friend.

- Bunny had a style of her own, and she really captured

that girl next door quality.

And that is one of the things

that Hefner felt was so valuable.

(upbeat jazz music)

- [Diane] She was a little adventuresome,

so she was the girl you could marry

who would do fun stuff in the bedroom.

It wasn't really an easy thing to accomplish back then,

because we had strong moral restrictions in America.

- [Narrator] Love seemed to be all that really mattered,

but each of them knew deep down

that they wanted their marriage vows to have real meaning.

- [Diane] It was easy to get a bunch of strippers,

it was very hard to get an ordinary secretary.

The idea that a woman would want to be involved in it,

would wanna produce material for it was perfect.

It was something they could advertise,

it was something that could bring in readers.

- But the suggestion back then,

that sex was simply a natural,

normal part of life, was very revolutionary.

- [Sarahjane] For however many faults he might have come

to be associated with, Hugh Hefner was willing to take

the input of a woman very seriously from the beginning

in the voice and look of the magazine.

Not only was she the first female photographer

to shoot for Playboy, she was one of the first photographers

to shoot for Playboy at all.

- Hefner had a very special feeling for Bunny

because she delivered and she delivered time and time again.

The closest relationship he ever had to a photographer

was with Bunny Yeager.

(upbeat music)

"Dear Bunny, I imagine you received our check

for slightly over $1,000

for your September feature, Bunny's Honeys."

- [Sarahjane] Her involvement with the magazine went deeper

than just the centerfolds she shot.

She would also bring models to their attention,

who maybe their centerfolds would end up being shot

on site and not by her.

She was very involved in promoting the Playboy Club

when it came down to Miami.

Bunny Yeager really helps define the look and voice

of Playboy in the early 50s and in the mid 50s.

(upbeat music)

As magazines like Playboy made it more culturally acceptable

to take off your clothes in front of the camera,

women started trying to get that notoriety, you know?

Get that ability to use that as a career stepping stone.

- Here were people, these housewives, with no agency,

with no creative expression, who were not really allowed

to go out and have a career.

People were putting them in front of the camera

and saying, "You are special."

- It was just something exciting for them to do,

it was a form of Hollywood for them.

- I talked to my dad about that when I was a teenager.

I berated him for looking at the Playboys,

and I said, why would you look at Playboys

when you have mom here?

And he says, well, I read the articles.

And it's like, who are you kidding?

(pleasant music)

♪ You come home ♪

♪ You come into my home ♪

♪ And there's there's nothing more child ♪

♪ I can say when you ♪

- When she started working for Playboy,

she was making really good money.

I mean, for those years, really good money.

- What we think we know about Hugh Hefner is he loved women,

and he wanted to own and control women.

- But I must tell you, frankly, that I am being taken

advantage of in this association.

And that it is becoming more and more a very one-sided deal,

with Playboy getting the short end of the stick.

- And what we think we know about Bunny Yeager

is she wanted more, and she needed more.

- She told me that when she really felt that she'd made it

was when she published her first book,

"How to Photograph the Female Figure."

That book sold close to 200,000 copies.

(upbeat music)

- Writing was definitely one of her passions.

She, I think, published like 20 books in her lifetime.

- [Announcer] From New York, "The Tonight Show," starring-

- [Sarahjane] She had an incredible drive to be respected

for how hard she worked and how good she was.

- A photographer, Bunny Yeager.

- [Anchor] We have a young lady with us

who's made a reputation in this country

as one of the fine photographers of gals.

Would you welcome Miss Bunny Yeager? Bunny.

(audience applauding)

But now you photograph yourself also, don't you?

- [Bunny] Oh yes, of course. Doesn't everyone?

- [Anchor] Not that I know of, I mean,

how do you know that you have the expression that you want?

- [Bunny] Sometimes I use a mirror,

I put a full length mirror right next to the camera

and then I can see just what I want.

Now that I'm more experienced, I don't need a mirror,

I just know what I'm doing.

- [Anchor] You take mostly glamour photography, don't you?

I mean, would that be the correct terminology?

- That's right.

Facial expressions for glamour photography,

amused, laughing, grinning, giggling,

playful, animated, contented, tranquil, charming, seductive,

sensual, surprised, serene, coy, wanting,

interested, calm, provocative teasing, awe-inspiring,

modest, flirty, alluring, wistful.

You mean a good model can do that?

- [Bunny] A good model has to do that.

Anyone can smile, but how many people

can do those expressions?

- [Anchor] I really don't know.

(audience laughing)

- Bunny was always trying to look ahead

and see, you know, where culture was going.

(upbeat music)

- [Ed] And, of course, at that time

with the Supreme Court ruling

about nudist films, everyone decided,

I'm gonna do a nudist film.

♪ You come home ♪

People like Doris Wishman,

she did, of course, "Nude on the Moon,"

which Bunny helped cast some of the models for that.

(upbeat music)

She loved being on film sets, she was an extra in many films

just because she loved movies so much.

- Will you take care of Mr. Norman?

- Certainly, come on, Mr. Norman.

- Oh boy, how are you?

- And why don't you just call me Bunny?

- Oh, I can.

(upbeat music)

- [Holly] My grandma took all of the white swimsuit photos

of Ursula Andres on that set.

They were used for the movie posters.

- Bunny worked on a lot of movies in Florida.

She helped write script, she did casting,

she did production, she did acting.

- Tom was still working with another model,

and since we had time to spare, we paused to watch

this willowy blonde in a series of calendar poses.

(pleasant music)

- Bunny and her husband, they saw what was happening

in the film business,

that a lot of people were making money.

So they decided they were gonna make some films.

They made three films, "Orgy of Revenge,"

"Sextet," and "Room 11."

These would've been x-rated films at that time,

by today's standards probably R-rated films.

Bunny and Bud did very well on the first movie,

but they had issues with their distributor,

so they never really recouped the money

from the second two films.

(upbeat music)

- Well, my parents always talked about their work,

so I knew from the get go that they were doing this.

Mom or dad actually asked me to draw the logo

for one of the films, that was during my high school years.

Certainly not something I wanted anybody to know about.

I often wonder what it was like to be in Bunny's home

in the 50s and 60s.

She both brought her work home,

but also kept her home orbit,

in a lot of ways, completely isolated.

(upbeat music)

She wanted it all, she wanted to have this picture perfect

vision of herself as a wife and mother.

And she also wanted to have this really daring,

you know, career that nobody could have plotted for her.

- She was always gonna be more cool than me.

I remember when I was in seventh grade, she had this outfit

where she had one of those little caps,

brimmed caps that were popular at the time in the late 60s,

a miniskirt, and go-go boots.

Now, you can't compete with that.

(upbeat music)

- [ASL Interpreter] Definitely as an adult now,

I can see that my life was very different than most people.

But you have to remember that everything I see

is through a deaf lens.

I think it's different because I was a deaf kid,

not because of who my mom was.

My dad was Arthur Irwin, he was known as Bud.

He was a police officer, and eventually became a detective.

He did that for many, many years before he left the job

to work with my mother.

- I have to say that my parents didn't have

a lot of personal friends,

I feel like most of their friends were business associates.

They were very much into each other.

They were very close, they were each other's best friends.

They were a big love story.

(pleasant music)

- [ASL Interpreter] Him and my mother

always worked together, he eventually began helping her

to get the equipment ready.

He also served as protection for some of the models.

- A police detective cannot support

his family in Miami Shores.

That's not the kind of people that live in Miami Shores,

so it was mom's photo money that allowed us

to live in such a nice neighborhood.

I mean, it took time, she was always having ideas of things.

She was very devoted to her work,

and sometimes that left me feeling kinda left out.

(pleasant music)

- [Sarahjane] As the 60s go on, and she's working

with models who have grown up in a culture

that has a little bit more sexual liberation,

there's a lot more daringness,

a lot more untidiness, let's say.

Instead of the Bouffant Beauties,

who she worked with for a long time,

you get these long-haired hippies,

these really just natural beauties.

- Into the late 60s and the early 70s,

when suddenly they wanted to see genitals,

it was a huge bar.

Women did not feel proud of their pussies.

They didn't have any ego about that.

That was a part they didn't want people to look at,

and it was a huge barrier.

And it meant a complete change in the kind of women

who would take their clothes off.

(upbeat music)

- I think that nudity, it's really a cyclical phenomenon.

I think it comes, it gets very liberal and extreme,

and it goes back, reacts the other way.

And it just seems to be a cycle in entertainment.

(pleasant music)

- Being a figure in Miami put Bunny

in a really optimal position to get involved

in the next wave of sexual expression.

(upbeat music)

- [Dian] When you get into the 70s,

suddenly artistry just wasn't important anymore.

- Nobody cared about pinup in the 70s,

it was kinda like that was old fashioned.

- Guccione, with Penthouse, introduced pubic hair.

Playboy waited about a year,

and then they came out with pubic hair.

(upbeat music)

Then you got a guy named Larry Flint.

He came out in 1976 with Hustler.

(upbeat music)

This was another revolution.

- Was a market chef, Larry Flint

and his enterprises and Penthouse Magazine.

- All that was important was getting the genitals,

get those genitals in your face.

(upbeat music)

- You know, that's just hardcore porn.

You don't need a great photographer like Bunny to do that.

- Bunny did try somewhat to adapt to the new market,

but when they wouldn't accept her work,

she wasn't willing to compromise.

- She was struggling to still try to do

the same kind of milder photography

that had made her success in the beginning

without a real audience.

- As pinup gets overshadowed by porn,

Bunny really starts to pull back.

There was a period where mom couldn't cross that line,

because the photos were getting so trashy

in the men's magazines, they were not at all respectful.

- Then in the late 60s and early 70s,

feminism was kind of born in that generation's incarnation.

And it was extremely anti pornography and,

by association, anti nudity.

- The marchers' aim was clear,

let's kill the $4 billion industry

that exploits females and female bodies, young and old.

It has nothing to do with sex,

with love, with erotica, it is violence.

And in most of the cases of rapists and child abusers

who have been questioned, they have said very clearly

that they were practicing

what they had seen demonstrated in pornography.

- [Cherilu] As I got older,

I started to be more embarrassed about it.

I didn't want my friends to know what mom did for a living.

(gentle music)

- [ASL Interpreter] I remember the first time

that I ever felt strange about it was when my sister,

Cherilu, began to feel embarrassed about it.

She came to me telling me how she felt it was wrong,

what mom was doing and that it was dirty,

and I didn't agree with that.

- I feel like that should be something private,

that kind of exposure, not just for anybody to see.

(gentle music)

- [Ed] The 70s were really tough for her.

She had to come up with some alternative income.

- A police officer approached her to do a job for him,

and it was of a picture of a man and woman together.

And that was the kind of picture

that she hadn't done up to that point.

- In the mid 70s, Bunny Yeager was charged with obscenity

for shooting sexual content.

(pleasant music)

A woman, an outspoken, pushy, famous woman

is the easiest target to bring down.

- It was a ridiculous charge.

They believed that it was retribution for Bud's work

with the police department,

'cause he was in internal affairs.

- [ASL Interpreter] My mom said, "If I'm guilty,

I will be going to jail for 15 years."

- Her lawyer went down to the courthouse lobby

and picked up a men's magazine

and brought it to the courtroom and said,

"Look, this is what's for sale down in your lobby,

and she's being charged with this same kind of thing."

And so, the case was dismissed.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music continues)

- I don't wanna speak for her family

to the devastating consequences that had on them.

- [ASL Interpreter] I had come home for spring break.

I was so excited to jump in the swimming pool at home,

I missed it so much.

And as soon as I got in, I looked and the pool

was untaken care of, the water was green, it was disgusting.

And I ran back in the house,

like, "What's wrong with the pool?"

"I was looking so forward to swimming."

They said, "We don't have the money

to have the pool cleaned."

(gentle music)

- There was some embarrassment over that arrest.

My dad was becoming an alcoholic, he was depressed.

- [Ed] Bud really blamed himself for Bunny being charged.

- [Cherilu] It just sent him into some depression.

Dad tried to take his life, he took pills.

Mom found him and called for the ambulance.

They pumped his stomach and he survived.

My husband and I got married,

and two weeks later I got a telegram.

(gentle music)

He took his life using a gun.

He was in the front seat of one of the cars,

and mom and Lisa found him the next morning.

(gentle music)

- [ASL Interpreter] I had gotten up very early

in the morning on a Saturday.

And my mom was in the same clothes

that she was wearing from the previous day.

And I went over to mom, I'm like, "What's wrong?"

"What are you doing here?"

She's like, "I'm just sitting here,

waiting for your father to come back."

And I told her, "I'm gonna go ahead and take a shower,

and get ready before I call 911."

And when I came outta the shower, my mom said,

"I found your father's body in his car."

I was dumbfounded.

(gentle music)

- [Cherilu] Well, I mean, we were all just devastated.

(gentle music)

(gentle music continues)

It was a very tough time,

it really deeply wounded all of us that were left.

(pleasant music)

When my kids were growing up, we moved to Ohio.

I was kind of glad for the separation,

because I didn't want the kids to love the photos.

- [ASL Interpreter] It was a really hard time

economically in our household.

- After Bunny pulls back from pinup photography,

she starts to focus on other aspects of her work.

She does a lot of headshot photographing,

she does commercial photographing.

She teaches classes, puts herself out there,

taking bit parts in TV shows,

does boudoir photography.

(pleasant music)

- She started performing, she had a singing act,

a nightclub act.

- [Cherilu] She had a beautiful voice,

she could have done that as her profession.

♪ Pack up all my care and whoa ♪

♪ Here I go swinging low ♪

- She has a second act that's wildly different

than her heyday as a photographer,

and she scrambles to make a living.

♪ Bye bye ♪

♪ Blackbird ♪

- I had a hard time understanding mom,

because she would do things

that she was not qualified to do, so to speak, officially.

Like, she wrote a diet book.

Well, mom's not a dietician.

Now, she did have a lot of experience dieting as a model.

(upbeat music)

- [ASL Interpreter] After my sister's wedding,

mom and I lived alone for probably about a year,

it was just the two of us.

Unfortunately, me and my mom began to have a lot of conflict

at that time, because this is when I had learned

that so much of my life had been kept from me

because they couldn't sign.

And I was starting to feel very resentful at this time

in my life, and I had met my first husband at this time,

and we got married and left.

(pleasant music)

- Think about how hard it is to have been

somebody who's considered very elite,

and become somebody who is really

scrambling for economic crumbs.

(upbeat music)

- [ASL Interpreter] Then we kinda lost track of her,

she took no pictures from 80s to 90s.

She was working in newspaper, graphic print design.

She was selling different pieces to magazines

for about 10 years, and then she stopped doing that.

But there was no profit, the money was terrible.

(gentle music)

The office was completely closed.

Everything from the office had been brought into our home,

and our house just held everything all the time.

- There was a fire, and she lost a lot of her negatives.

She just felt so deflated.

She didn't have a chance

to get back up in a sense for herself.

(upbeat music)

- In the early 90s, most of the people that I knew

that collected pinup art, they were fans of the Rocketeer.

They knew about the Bettie Pages, and all these like obscure

little zines where they could see pictures of Bettie.

- People rediscovered Bettie in the 1990s,

Bettie became this icon of early female sexuality.

(upbeat music)

- [Guinevere] To me, it was this kind of cipher

where people projected things onto her,

people thought she was a rebel.

People thought she was this SM goddess.

A generation of 90s rockabilly girls

thought she was the style icon.

And the number of women I saw in the 90s

with Bettie Page bangs, but like neck tattoos, is a lot.

- I think the young people are embracing, again,

a kind of a retro cool from the latter 50s

and the 60s and 70s.

In that context, Bettie Page is truly iconic.

(upbeat music)

- Bunny really leans into trying to get involved

in the culture that surrounds Bettie Page.

- [ASL Interpreter] And that's when she started trying

to sell some work on eBay,

lithoprints and that type of stuff.

- People who in the past, if they had wanted, you know,

a signed lithograph of Bettie Page,

would've had to write her with a self-addressed,

stamped envelope, can now go on eBay and just buy it.

(upbeat music)

- [ASL Interpreter] After my mom did that work

of Bettie Page, it seemed like they lost touch

for a very, very long time.

And that was when mom finally found out

that she had been put into a psychiatric hospital,

and was unable to be reached.

- [Bunny] Well, hi there, Bettie.

First, I want to- - [Bettie] Long time no see.

- [Bunny] When I've been interviewed, they always ask

who I thought was the best model I ever worked with,

and I've always had to answer Bettie Page because, you know,

you had a face that I believe was perfect in every way.

And your body was the kind

that looked natural when you were nude,

instead of appearing naked.

I think your biggest asset was your enthusiasm

and your creative facial expressions

that made you better than any other model.

- [Bettie] I think it was also, and because I liked posing.

I liked the modeling.

I can make in two hours more than I would make

40 hours a week doing secretary work eight hours a day.

(upbeat music)

- It's very rare when you find an artist

and you look at their work,

and it literally defines an epoch and a time

because they capture the form

and the shape of that moment.

(pleasant music)

- [Larry] She captured the essence of what the bikini

and the girl go together.

(pleasant music)

- [Sarahjane] It's this major contribution to style

and popular culture, the bikini,

and nobody knows that it was Bunny.

- There's a famous photo of her that we've had in galleries

that is her in a daisy bikini that she made

by putting daisies together, fake daisies.

And so she had a similar swimsuit,

not the iconic one, but made out of flowers.

And when I was 14, she asked me,

"Well, what do you think, Holly, would happen

if you put this on?"

And I was horrified, I looked at her and I said,

"I think my mom would kill you,

that's what I think would happen."

(pleasant music)

(gentle music)

- [Dian] One of the great things about the passage of time

is that it will take the veneer of filth

off of nude material and turn it into art.

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

- There were two main reasons that we decided

to do Bunny Yeager's first ever institutional show

at the Andy Warhol Museum.

Seeing her work and thinking, of course,

about Cindy Sherman, and Yasumasa Morimura,

and many photographers who do self-portraiture,

utilizing disguise and masquerade.

I realized that Bunny had beat them to the punch

by at least 15 years.

I wanted to make sure that not only did I get to know more

about her work, her motivations,

but how she should be woven

into the narrative of art history, because I realized

pretty quickly that she deserved to be.

(gentle music)

Many curators, and those in the museum profession

would not have viewed pinup photography as relevant

to the lineage of art history until quite recently.

Feminism in its first, second, and third waves

within the academy allowed that door

to open ever so gradually.

But it took until 2010, when we did that exhibition,

for it to be fully open.

I'll never forget that one of the first conversations

we had, I told her, "We're so thrilled

to be showing your work at the Warhol Museum."

And she immediately said,

"How much are you going to sell them for?"

And I said, "Well, Bunny, we're actually not selling them."

And she said, "Well then why are we doing this?"

- Well, I often tell the story about Diane Arbus.

She called Bunny the world's greatest pinup photographer.

She came to Miami intent on meeting Bunny and called her,

and Bunny said, "I've never heard of you,"

and Bunny refused to meet her.

And this was the leading female photographer

on the New York scene at the time.

She didn't even really understand the significance of that.

- I don't think she really thought so much about

whether she was making art or not.

Bunny really did self-portraits all the time.

She was fearless like that, it showed her courage.

And it's what first got me interested, I said,

"Oh, I wanna meet this lady who's taking pictures

that looks like this."

- She gets a museum exhibition,

she gets picked up by an art gallery.

People start to look at her photographs

as part of the story of photographic history.

- [ASL Interpreter] I found out that a gallery

was trying to get her to show some of her work,

and we were just completely shocked by it.

I mean, not because we didn't think she deserved it,

she did, she was an amazing artist.

But they started to show an extreme interest in her.

And from there, it only spread.

The calls didn't stop coming from galleries.

(upbeat music)

- [ASL Interpreter] And I remember going out one day

and there was just, the place was full of cars

Everybody was outside drinking and smoking,

it was like a party again.

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

- [Carlos] Paz De La Huerta

always wanted to be photographed by Bunny.

Bunny photographed in our house, in El Portal,

literally blocks away from her house.

(pleasant music)

- She was an accomplished photographer,

she was a successful photographer, but she was also a model.

- [Carlos] When I photographed her in our studio,

Bunny went back to her modeling years.

There she was, having another chance at all the things

that she loved, it was like everything aligned for her.

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

- She still used a film camera till the day she died.

(pleasant music)

- She told me that Hugh Hefner, he's such a gentleman.

And sure enough, when she passed away, he was a gentleman,

and he sent 1,000 red roses to her funeral.

(gentle music)

- [ASL Interpreter] My mother passed away,

and you can't imagine the amount of work

that she left behind.

- I was Bunny's manager and agent for four years,

and she was one of my best friends.

Lisa would say I was probably the worst thing

that ever happened to her.

From the day I walked in this office, she did not like me,

and that never changed, she was totally consistent.

- [ASL Interpreter] I felt like Ed

was taking anything he wanted.

He reorganized things in a way that made no sense to me.

It was all this work me and my mother had done

organizing these archives.

Five years worth of work was just destroyed.

The work was being duplicated, and just put out there

in ways that we had no control over.

(pleasant music)

- My impression is that Ed

was a very good salesperson for mom.

I think he was one of the people that was encouraging her

to get her photos into the art galleries

and to do art shows.

- Lisa was very, very protective of her mom,

not only as a daughter, but business wise.

- [ASL Interpreter] I was so done with him,

and I decided to hire an attorney to get rid of him.

- It was personally devastating for me, but I bounced back,

and at the end of the day, I think it was all for the best.

- It was extremely overwhelming to be the only person

responsible for the archives of my mother's work.

My sister just didn't care about it like I did.

She was always on the phone,

trying to find someone to get rid of it.

And I was on the phone,

trying to find someone to partner with me.

- When I was in college, I saw "The Godfather,"

and I thought about Michael Corleone, you know?

How he did not want to be part of the family business.

He so did not wanna be part of it, and it drew him in.

I have kind of felt like that.

I wish I could have embraced what my family was doing,

but I couldn't, and I still can't.

I don't think that the photos are respectful to women.

I understand completely what my mom's feelings are on this,

but I disagree with my mom.

My grandma is someone that I absolutely adored growing up,

someone who was good to me, someone who always made sure

that I was taken care of.

(gentle music)

- [Cherilu] My sister and I decided

it was time for us to sell everything.

- [ASL Interpreter] It's hard to say how I feel about it.

My sister was the one that really pushed me,

she didn't care about my mother's work the way that I do.

It was just too painful to go on.

(gentle music)

- Everything was sold to Daniel and Sarahjane Blum,

and I think that they're continuing to sell the work.

(gentle music)

- Bunny worked so much that there is enough material here

that I could try and sell it myself for three lifetimes,

and still not get anywhere.

More than anything, I'm really still trying to figure out

the best way to talk about her and the best way to see her.

(gentle music)

- [Interviewer] What do you think your mother's legacy is?

(gentle music)

- You know, I wish her legacy was different.

- She changed how photos were shot.

She taught people how to take the first selfies.

I mean, this is the 21st century,

she was so far ahead of her time.

- Bunny was really expert in creating mood

through the use of costume, wig, makeup to create ambiance.

- That is the Instagram aesthetic.

(pleasant music)

Bunny promoted the idea that it's okay

for all of us to see and be seen.

That it is not just for the famous people

to be photographed as glamorous or beautiful or sexy.

- She wasn't about the performative sexuality of a body,

she was about the sexiness of a body.

- What you see today is as women

try to put themselves forward as sexual beings,

try to share that with the world,

they need to be their own Bunny Yeager.

(upbeat music)

- I love this term, reluctant feminist,

because I kind of felt a little bit like, who are you to say

what's supposed to make someone feel powerful,

and what's supposed to make someone feel degraded?

'Cause it's like, you can never really agree on that.

- One of the things that I think is even more taboo

than women's sexualities and women's bodies,

it's women's ambition.

(pleasant music)

- She managed to take some of the most iconic photographs

of the time and frustratingly,

most people don't know her name.

- She didn't really get the credit she deserved.

(pleasant music)

- [Cherilu] I believe what my mother was doing

was purely a beautiful art form.

It was always a form of art and beauty.

- Bunny was unapologetically herself.

She didn't conform to any cultural ideas

of what a woman, a mother, a wife, should be at that time.

(upbeat music)

- I want people to know that it is possible

to be revolutionary without realizing it.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music continues)

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

(pleasant music continues)

- [Interviewer] When you look back on these pictures,

how do you feel about it?

Do you feel proud?

- Yes, my grandchildren, I want them to see and say...

'Cause, I mean, they look at me,

and one looked at my hands one time and said,

"Oh gran, I don't wanna get old."

But I wanna show them pictures and say,

"Hey, gran was hot and she had a good time."

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)

(pleasant music continues)

- [Interviewer] What were the Miami girls like?

- They weren't bad, they weren't bad.

(pleasant music)

(pleasant music continues)