Bombshells: Glamour Girls of a Lifetime
Page 11
One particularly memorable convention was the FanEx Fantasy/Sci-Fi Convention in Baltimore in 1991. She sang the R & B classic “Fever” with a small combo, and then performed “The Ballad of Honey Parker” about her character in 50 Foot Woman. “I acted out the story while I sang, and people just loved it. There was pandemonium.”
Encouraged by such responses, Yvette resumed her career, including her first movie role in fifteen years, Evil Spirits (1991), a horror cheapie enhanced by a fascinating cast. In December 1991 she had a leading role in a local theater production of The Bones of Joaquin, playing “a beat-up broad in a circus sideshow.” She also put together a cabaret act that includes not only her singing but also impressions of Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and other movie blondes.
Yvette also pursued her childhood aspiration of writing by starting two projects: a history of both sides of her family, and a novella about her relationship with Hutton. A proposed play she has been developing for a decade, on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, is currently on the back burner, although she still has hopes for it. And most enticing of all for her devoted fans is that Yvette has written Attack of the Leeches II in which her character survives and “becomes Ivana to Donald Trump.”
During the early nineties, she began singing in local clubs, performing some of the enduring Gershwin and other standards she learned through her parents and also some original compositions. Following the death of her father, for whom she had been caring during his final months, Yvette refocused her attention on music in 1996-97. A talented jazz performer with a warm vocal style, she cowrote new songs and recorded two dozen tracks (and even a music video) for a prospective album containing elements of jazz, pop, Latin, reggae, and country.
Looking back, Yvette has no regrets that she became identified as the queen of the B-movie bad girls. “I loved doing that kind of role. They were better written and more interesting than other roles because you’re the cause of conflict, things are centered around you.
“It’s a marvelous thing in my life that all this has happened,” Yvette says happily. “I’ve got more creative energy now than I’ve had in years. It’s really a kind of miracle. I’m still here, and I still have a lot of things I want to accomplish.”
June wilkinson
Dixie Evans
Joy Harmon
also by Steve Sullivan
Va Va Voom!: Bombshells, Pin-Ups,
Sexpots, and Glamour Girls
Pop Memories: The History of American
Popular Music, 1890-1954
BOMBSHELLS: GLAMOUR GIRLS OF A LIFETIME. Copyright © 1998 by Steve Sullivan. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
All photos of Maria Stinger copyright © Bunny Yeager; photos of Dixie Evans on pages 20 and 35 courtesy of Dixie Evans and Exotic World; photos of Jennie Lee on pages 69 and 81 courtesy of Exotic World; photos of Cynthia Myers on page 94 and in the color insert copyright © Playboy Enterprises, Inc. Used by permission.
Book design and composition by Margo A. Mooney
eISBN 9781429956222
First eBook Edition : July 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sullivan, Steve.
Bombshells: glamour girls of a lifetime/Steve Sullivan. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0—312—16790—3
1. Actresses — United States — Biography. 2. Models (Persons) — United States — Biography. 3. Glamour photography — Anecdotes.
I. Title.
PN2285.S86 1998
792′.028’092273 — dc21
98—4618
[b]
First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: June 1998
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