Category: Classic Beauty

I have to thank Longtime Reader Pierre (who is French, and somehow stays loyal to this rantbucket despite all my slurs on the Frogs), who pointed out to me that my Classic Beauty section has a glaring omission:  to wit, horror-movie star Ingrid Pitt.  Quite apart from her astounding beauty, which we’ll enjoy below, she is to my knowledge the only Classic Beauty who survived a Nazi concentration camp in WWII.

Anyway, here she is, in black and white:

And in living color:

Lovely.

Another of Pierre’s suggestions next week.  He has exquisite taste.

Was there a pimply-faced teenager back in the 1970s who didn’t have Jacqueline Bisset in his Vaseline-handed fantasies?

And in living color daydreams?

And even when you couldn’t see her face…

And today, in her late 70s?

…still gorgeous.

I think I have often remarked on how much I was smitten by the sexy women of Chile when last I visited there.  And it’s a good thing I didn’t see Leonor Varela in Santiago, because… well, because.

And in classic black & white sultriness:

Exquisite.

Last weekend we looked at Bunny Yeager as a model.  Today we’ll look at Bunny the photographer — and most notably at her most famous model, Bettie Page.

As Richard Corliss once described, Bettie had been the nadir of sexual exploitation:

In New York City, Page “starred” in tatty, furtive 8mm bondage loops (Dominant Betty Dances With Whip, Hobbled in Kid Leather Harness) that her Svengali, Irving Klaw, sold in plain brown wrappers at his Movie Star News shop. But in Miami, under Yeager’s congenial tutelage, Page bloomed as the girl next door with the bedroom shades up, or the beach bombshell with the seraphic grin. Between them, the Blond Bunny and brunette Bettie made nudity look both sexy and healthy.

And how:

Sensational.

There are millions of Bettie Page pics all over the Internet.  But the good Bettie pics are mostly those taken by Bunny Yeager.

She started off as a model herself, and then became one of the most well-known photographers of them all:  Bunny Yeager had it all.

She didn’t even have to be blonde…

 

But still:

 

Best. Selfies. Ever.

Let’s start with England’s James II:

Arabella Churchill

…and

Dorothy Sedley

…then on to France’s Napoleon Bonaparte:

Maria Walewska

…and his nephew, Napoleon III:

Harriet Howard

Rachel Félix

Virginie Castiglione

Back across the Channel, we have England’s William IV:

Dorothea Jordan

And finally, across the Atlantic, the mistress of yet another William:

Monica Lewinsky