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.
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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.
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