Yvette “Vedder” Vickers

August 26, 1928 – body discovered April 27, 2011

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but it’s true: life is too short.

 

Yvette Vickers
Yvette Vickers

 

People can’t wrap their heads around this.

Yvette came to Hollywood to make her mark.  It looked promising, her career starting off with a small part in the greatest film ever,  Sunset Boulevard.
Yvette was a featured “extra” – a girl laughing on the phone. No mention in the credits.
(This was before anyone that cut a fart on a movie set got a credit.)

After it became apparent she wasn’t going to be the next big star, she took bigger parts in lesser films.
Bad films.  Baaaaad films.

 

 

She was a Playboy Playmate in 1959, but then her career pretty much dried up.
This will become kind of funny, later.

 

 

Her neighbors described her as “very independent” and “she kept to herself.”  Her house was described as “a rat-hole.”  My translation: crazy old bat.  Nice… but crazy.

 

 

I say that with affection.  I’ve met loads of celebrities like her.  Because they had a degree of fame, they are “eccentric.”  I love meeting them and I love talking to them about their life and work.

Ultimately, she was the goods.  She was in films – some good, some bizarre.  She had a cult following.  In recent years she would do the autograph shows and conventions… people really liked her.  She seemed friendly enough.  She probably did have psycho fans.  I’ve seen enough of them around here too.

Yvette was living in this sweet home on Westwanda in Benedict Canyon.  Ann Margret lives nearby.

 

 

 

The scene:  The mail was not crammed into her mailbox.  Yvette would often stop her mail when she traveled.  The woman that discovered Yvette’s body, Susan Savage, said that Yvette had mail delivery stopped in 2010, and never had it resumed.  Savage also mentioned that the phone books were delivered recently, and she noticed that after a couple of days, Yvette’s were gone.  So it appeared as if everything was copasetic.

 

Point to remember:

Yvette was a very private person.  She didn’t interact a lot with neighbors. (okayyy…)

She was paranoid, convinced that every passing car held a potential stalker.

When her mail piled up at the post office, the mail carrier left notes for Yvette. Another neighbor told the mail carrier that Yvette would often go to Vegas.  It made sense.

Her phone was off the hook.  So was she.

People did become concerned.

People did try to reach out.

Yvette just… slipped through the cracks.  Literally.

 

“However, last Wednesday, when I saw there were cobwebs forming on the inside of the mail box, I just knew something was wrong. So I knocked on her gate for long time; it was impossible to open. It was bolted twice, nailed shut, and then, braced at the base with a 2×4. Trust me, it was NOT easily accessible from the street. If it was, our mail carrier might have been able to make contact sooner. I ended up scaling her steeply graded hillside, stepping over high metal barricades and bloodying myself in the process, till I finally got onto her property. All the doors and windows were locked and reinforced from within. I knocked on every door/window, calling her name the whole time. I could see that the lights were on, but there was no response. I went down to the front door of the house, and saw the broken window pane which is how I ultimately got in.”

Clearly Yvette was a hoarder.  Clearly.  There was shit everywhere, and not good shit.  We’re talking food shit.  Girl drank too.  Brandy.  I’m not saying she was a lush.  I’m saying she liked her brandy.

VIDEO INSIDE THE HOUSE!

 

Dearly Departed – Episode 1: “B-Movie Queens” from Dearly Departed on Vimeo.

 

To clarify a couple of points.

She was not laying there for a year. Maybe a few months.  Maybe.

There was an electrical heater on for the entire time she was dead.  Obviously her bills were being paid electronically.

 

Thanks Colleen Tebo

 

The mailbox?  We addressed that earlier.  Here is a photograph I took yesterday (May 4) Look closely for the cobwebs.  They are there.

 

 

Yvette’s body was found on the flooor… she was ALLLLL Egyptian.  Mummified.  Barely recognizable as a human being.  It took a while for them to figure out the sex of the body.  Yvette probably rotted into the carpet, and she was absolutely no doubt ravaged by insects.  When they took her downtown, they couldn’t positively identify her.  With that sort of decay, they couldn’t even get a fingerprint.

May 13, 2011 – her body has been positively identified.

Yvette has family.  She had a brother who hadn’t seen her in a year.  There are a few family members scattered around, but she probably severed ties with them long ago.  We’ve seen it before.   They’ll no doubt have to do some DNA testing to figure out who is who. More like, “Who gets what?.”

Something tells me that a house in Benedict Canyon will bring out anyone she may have been remotely related to. (apologies for the overuse of italics in this article)  My guess – she bought the one-bedroom one-bath house in 1980 for $56,000.  Now worth around $650k.  Yeah, they’ll come sniffing around.  No doubt.

Her death has been ruled natural. Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.  That just basically means that she died and no one killed her.  There is no sign of foul play.

However, if you watch that clip Sunset Boulevard (above) a couple of more times, you can see what might drive someone to murder.

Gone.

 

 

Thanks ML, C and EE.

 

 

3 thoughts on “Yvette “Vedder” Vickers

  • October 5, 2022 at 11:58 am
    Permalink

    Yvette having bought the house in1980 for $56,000 seems incorrect. There are still photos of a young Yvette Vickers in the Benedict Canyon house as early as the 1950’s that match the Dearly Departed video exactly. I read somewhere she acquired it after divorcing her first husband in 1957. I believe she lived or at least owned the house for over fifty years.

  • April 3, 2020 at 1:23 am
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    Did anyone else notice the date, amount, and final number at bottom of check are the same? —Laura

    • May 28, 2020 at 9:48 am
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      The date and amount are pretty cool… but the only reason the same number is at the bottom is because the check’s been encoded. So basically, someone put it through an encoder to put the amount of the check at the bottom. From your friendly neighborhood banker.

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