The word got around yesterday afternoon that poor Yvette Vickers, former 1950s bombshell blonde, B-movie actress (Attack of the Giant Leeches, etc.) and July 1959 Playboy playmate, was found dead on 4.27 in her Benedict Canyon home.

Since the body was mummified it was speculated that Vickers might been dead for as long as a year. I guess dead is dead and it doesn’t matter much to the deceased if his/her body is attended to a day or a year after leaving the planet, but the mummy-like state of Vickers’ remains means she didn’t have many friends, and that’s sad. I’m sorry.

To me Vickers’ best screen appearance was a walk-on part in Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63). She appears with Paul Newman in the clip below at 8:28, sharing a scene with Melvyn Douglas and Brandon DeWilde. She played a small-town married woman fooling around with Newman’s barbed-wire-soul cowhand.