Pin-Up Legend and Miami Local Bunny Yeager Passes Away at 85

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Pin-Up legend Bunny Yeager passed away on Sunday in a North Miami nursing home. The model turned photographer can best be credited for discovering Bettie Page in the 50s and, according to her Facebook page, can be credited for designing the first bikini in America. Practically a Miami native (she began living here in 1948, during her senior year of high school), Yeager designed many of the bikinis and one-piece suits she would use in her photography, including the leopard print suit Page wore in her iconic photograph alongside leopards.

Some credit her with being "The World's Greatest Pin-Up Photographer." She did a lot for the Miami community as well, having developed her own singing nightclub act in the 70s as well as her own newspaper, Stage and Screen, which covered Miami's entertainment industry in the 80s. She's had a heavy influence on artists of today, and her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and The Center for Visual Communication here in Miami, to name a few. Yeager was 85 when she passed, however her legend will live on in dozens of her own photographic publications, issues of Playboy and, if the legend is true, bikini-filled beaches everywhere.
· Bunny Yeager [Facebook]
· Pin-Up Photographer Bunny Yeager Dies at 85 [NBC 6]
· Pin-Up Queen Bunny Yeager Dies at 85 [Refinery 29]