By Brian Landa
@BrianLandaLawyer
Betty Page. Or Bettie Page. The name instantly evokes certain imagery: Black bangs and a mischievous smile. THE pinup aesthetic. But that didn’t happen on its own. You needed a photographer, and Bunny Yeager was one of the best.
Naked Ambition: Bunny Yeager recently premiered at the Oak Cliff Film Festival 2024. Nearly fifteen years in the making, this fantastic passion project from Miami-based directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch follows her career from the early days of Playboy (a lot of the earliest “bunny” pics were courtesy of Bunny), through various sexual revolutions and feminist movements.
But Bunny (I will use her first name here because I think she would have preferred that, somewhat ironically) was a reluctant feminist. Liberated, but not quite a feminist. Certainly not of the sign-carrying picket line chanting Gloria Steinem variety by any means. Steinem “went undercover” as an official bunny at a Playboy Club for a magazine article/expose, but it only served to boost the empire more than it boosted her. Those days are long gone. Even the Playboy brand has been downgraded. But the photographic evidence of the era lives on brightly and happily through Bunny’s work.
Bunny was not really a feminist at all. She was about the art. Directors Scholl and Tabsch said during the post-screening Q&A that a proposed title they almost used was Reluctant Feminist. I like Naked Ambition so much better. Edgy and pulls no punches.
I love that Bunny appeared on an episode of the vintage game show What’s My Line? where participants try to guess a profession. Her answer was loudly and proudly “cheesecake photographer.” And not that kind of cheesecake. Unless it was part of the set or production design, of course.
Thoroughly entwined with the communities of Miami and Key West in the art deco heyday, Bunny somehow got in with the big boys of photography. The details of Bunny’s initial access to a very insular world are somewhat vague, but here it’s really about the journey AND the destination. And maintaining a bit of mystery is warranted. She was quite a looker on her own, to the point where she was essentially crowned “The World’s Prettiest Photographer.” And she leaned into that. Many of her photographs are self-portraits. Selfies before selfies were a thing.
Bunny was deeply entrenched in her own world. On one occasion, Diane Arbus (1923-1971), a legendary feminist photographer known for drawing attention to marginalized groups, wanted to meet Bunny, but Bunny didn’t know who she was, so refused. Couldn’t be bothered with feminists or the politics of the downtrodden anyways. This is not a slight. That was not her world. There were perhaps beautiful women waiting to be photographed on legendary South Beach Miami or in a jungle setting
The photos taken at a long-gone safari habitat attraction in Southern Florida are among Bunny’s most well-known, with that iconic leopard print. And oh what photographs they are. The best way to see them is in books. Physical media absolutely matters.
Page went Evangelical and became a recluse later in life, as Bunny would also hit hard times economically. But Bunny’s path was different. She started to write books compiling her work, and even left her seclusion for gallery events. I was actually at one of the book release events in 2012 in the Dallas Design District at the Photographs Do Not Bend gallery and I was able to get a copy of her book “Bunny Yeager’s Darkroom” pre-signed. Bunny was by then too ill to appear in person (although word was that she wanted to, and the well-attended and well-curated exhibition was a true gift to our city of Dallas, which is edgier and cooler than people may realize), and passed away in 2014.
Bunny leaves behind a couple children, a hearing-impaired daughter who somehow always understood Mom’s world, and another much more conservative-on-all-fronts daughter who never accepted this part of Mom’s life, and is perhaps warming to it all now due to the documentary. The directors indicated some necessary thawing in the Q&A. May Bunny’s memory be a blessing.
Documentary filmmaking is truly God’s work (whichever god you choose, if any). The slowly churning process of getting a documentary to screen is an arduous endeavor. Years of fundraising and drumming up interest, and then the cameras roll.
Or they roll underfunded along the way for years, to perhaps catch that moment. The magic moment that makes a documentary transcendent. I’m generally not a fan of the uncertain unknown. But I love the exciting unknown. I do not watch movie trailers in general. I want the surprise.
Sometimes documentarians cull from thousands of hours of footage. And nobody really knows where the story is going, or if there even is a story. Making a documentary is a passion, not just a movie. And sometimes it can take well over a decade. This one was worth the wait.
Page of course has popped up in various pop culture media over the years. A character in the graphic series The Rocketeer is directly based on her look, although the Disney movie went with Jennifer Connelly, certainly a more than worthy substitute. A great movie called The Notorious Bettie Page was released in 2006, starring Gretchen Mol as Bettie and the always fantastic Sarah Paulson as Bunny. But Bunny in that film is practically a bit role and a cipher. We learn almost nothing about her. That’s what this documentary is for.
