Bunny Yeager

Linnea Eleanor Yeager was nicknamed "Bunny" after a character Lana Turner played in Weekend At The Waldorf (1945), and grew up wanting to be a Hollywood star like Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable. Initially, she entered a world of glamour and glitz in front of the camera, becoming the most photographed model in Miami. But after enrolling in a photography class, and sending some of her pictures of Maria Stringer to glamour pulp Eye magazine, Bunny's work appeared on the next front cover-and...See more

Linnea Eleanor Yeager was nicknamed "Bunny" after a character Lana Turner played in Weekend At The Waldorf (1945), and grew up wanting to be a Hollywood star like Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable. Initially, she entered a world of glamour and glitz in front of the camera, becoming the most photographed model in Miami. But after enrolling in a photography class, and sending some of her pictures of Maria Stringer to glamour pulp Eye magazine, Bunny's work appeared on the next front cover-and suddenly she was a published photographer. By the time she met pin-up legend Bettie Page, Bunny was already establishing a name for herself as a female photographer in a pin-up industry dominated by men. Her pictures of the "Temptress from Tennessee" have a distinctive personal style that's been much imitated but never equaled-whether cavorting on sunny beaches, jiggling as a devil girl, or roaming the denizens as a jungle girl, Bettie is perfectly in tune with her environment and totally at ease with the snapping shutter. Like many of her photo-shoots with models, Bunny also designed and sewed the all the costumes that Bettie wore. One auspicious studio session though found Bettie posed nude, wearing only a fur-trimmed Santa hat and putting up Christmas decorations-it was published as the centerfold in the holiday issue of Playboy in January 1955. Both women would grace the famous pages of the publication many times after. Bunny continued as a highly successful pin-up photographer, with her pictures earning recognition for popularizing the bikini. Chosen as 'Photographer of the Year' in 1959, she was also voted one of the Top 10 Female photographers in the US. Travelling extensively in the '60s, she created the iconic still images of Ursula Andress ascending the Caribbean beach for Dr. No (1961), and discovered a huge array of pin-up stars and glamour models along the way, many becoming Playboy 'Playmate of the Year'. She playing herself in some saucy semi-documentary movies too (later released on video by Cult Epics), and opposite Frank Sinatra as a Swedish masseuse in the swinging Lady In Cement (1968). By the '70s Bunny stopped selling photos to men's magazine, as she felt they had become too sexually explicit and raunchy. She continued to take photographs of beautiful women, however, for the rest of her life. Before her death in 2014, she would witness a critical reevaluation of her work in museums and galleries throughout the world. See less