My Friend, Yvette Vickers: In Her Own Words as told to John O’Dowd
Reviewed by Denise Noe

Blonde beauty Yvette Vickers (1928-2010) won fame in the 1950s and 1960s for her career as an actress. Although she was almost 30 at the time she played a juvenile delinquent in Reform School Girl (1957), her perky good looks made her believable in it. A
Reform School Girl poster of her fighting with Gloria Castillo has become a collector’s item. In 1958, she played small town temptress Honey Parker in the unforgettable cult classic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. It is shapely Vickers who dances in the
local bar with Harry Archer (William Hudson) when his jealous wife Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes), who has grown to enormous proportions due to an encounter with an extraterrestrial, rips open the building to pick Harry up like a doll. The next year, she
played two-timing wife Liz Walker in the similar Attack of the Giant Leeches. Yvette also displayed her cute and curvy body in several men’s magazines; she was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in its July 1959 issue.
Sadly, this talented and accomplished performer is known to many people primarily for the sad circumstances of her death. In her senior years, she withdrew from family and friends, spending almost all her time in her home. Last seen alive in 2010, a
neighbor discovered Yvette’s corpse in her Beverly Hills home in April 2011. She may have been dead for a year. When discovered, her body had mummified. There was no evidence of foul play but the tragic circumstances of her death may have obscured for
much of the public the accomplishments of her life.
John O’Dowd to the rescue! This author is best known for his work on tragic actress Barbara Payton who once earned thousands opposite Hollywood stars like James Cagney and Gregory Peck but ended her life as an alcoholic prostitute charging as little as
$5. His biography, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story and follow up photography volume Barbara Payton: A Life in Pictures, restored humanity and depth to Payton.
In the audiobook My Friend, Yvette Vickers: In Her Own Words as told to John O’Dowd, this author performs a similar service for Yvette. Of course, there is an enormous difference between this work and those on Payton since O’Dowd never met Payton
but was actually friends with Yvette.
The audiobook consists of O’Dowd’s statements coupled with Yvette’s answers to his interview questions. It also includes relevant voice messages she left on his answering machine. Yvette Vickers was the daughter of jazz musicians who was raised in
a safe and loving environment.
Yvette speaks with fondness of her life as a young actress. She enjoyed a romance with Ralph Meeker, who was most famous for his role as Mike Hammer in the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly, that was genuinely romantic. “He took me dancing every Friday and
to restaurants,” she recalls. “We took a carriage ride in the park.” Yvette recalls being part of the “beat generation. She says, “It was ‘beat,’ not ‘beatnik,” because most of those hanging out, as she often did, in beat clubs disliked
that word. Yvette and her compatriots had health interests of which “health food” was one part. She believes she possessed a “joy of life” or, as it is often called, a “joie de vivre.”
Coming from a family of jazz musicians, it is hardly surprising that she also had musical talent. She discusses a period when she was “concentrating on music” and a “cabaret show” as well as putting out a CD. “I had discipline,” she asserts. �
��I worked hard and I played hard.”
Yvette acknowledges a special flair for male company. “I’m a man’s woman and unashamed of it.”
In the voice messages she left for O’Dowd, her upbeat and optimistic attitude comes through strongly as she encourages him on putting the book together. O’Dowd comments that the voice messages are “bittersweet” for him because they are evidence
of the “love, kindness, and support” of a “true friend.”
O’Dowd tells us that Yvette loved animals throughout her life and had many pets. She had a special love for a dog she named Greta Garbo but usually called Garbo. “She thought of Garbo as her soulmate,” O’Dowd explains. There is a special
poignancy in the voice messages we hear Yvette leave about Garbo: “There’s a crisis . . . growths on her underbelly. She isn’t active like she used to be.” Then, finally, she says, “Garbo didn’t make it.”
It is often believed that Yvette turned “paranoid” in her final years. She talked of suspicious characters hanging around and hang-up calls. However, her fears may not entirely have been in her imagination. O’Dowd tells us he heard a strange and
threatening type of voice message left on her answering machine. Perhaps her withdrawal from society was not just because of paranoia but genuine menaces.
Regardless of the precise reasons leading to her death, it is Yvette Vickers active and accomplished life for which she should be remembered. This audiobook is a powerful tribute to that life.

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