Naked Ambition Review: The Life of Bunny Yeager

Naked Ambition, from directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch, examines the life of Bunny Yeager, a pinup photographer in the 1950s.

Bunny Yeager began her career as a model, but as she became a wife and mother, she decided to pursue photography as a way to earn money with a more flexible schedule. She had a successful career as a photographer, capturing the beauty of the female form in the pinup style, but things took off for her when she started working with Bettie Page and selling those pictures to Playboy. Yeager’s work with Page allowed both of them to find success in an industry built by and for men. 

This is where Naked Ambition could have done more with its subject. As much as Scholl and Tabsch admire Bunny Yeager and her work, there seems to be little curiosity about her beyond the Wikipedia details of her life. There are moments when we get glimpses into the inner workings of her life, but it seems as though every time the filmmakers started down an interesting path, they pulled back to get on to the next fact. With a run time of just 73 minutes, there could have been more time spent on some of the deeper implications of a woman photographer who specialized in pinups and nudes.

The film does include a ton of Yeager’s work. Hundreds of photos are displayed throughout the run time, along with a number of home videos that allow us to gain a bit more personal insight into what she was like at home. It also includes interviews with several of her colleagues, including Larry King, Hugh Hefner, Ed Cristin, and some recordings of conversations with Bettie Page herself. 

The real intrigue in Naked Ambition is found in the conversations with Yeager’s daughters, Lisa Irwin and Cherilu Duval. In these interviews, we get a better sense of who the woman was and what she faced throughout her career, because it was reflected in her home. As a child, her daughter Cherilu was embarrassed by her mother’s work, and she continues to hold a more conservative position that what she did was exploitative work. Lisa, on the other hand, grew up believing that her mother empowered women to feel more control over their bodies. She worked for a long time to help preserve her mother’s legacy until Bunny’s work was sold to the Grapefruit Moon Gallery. Listening to their opposing views was fascinating, but I felt like they weren’t examined in the larger context of Yeager’s life. 

There are moments where Naked Ambition delves a bit deeper into Yeager’s existence away from the camera. The documentary covers the suicide of her husband and collaborator, Bud Irwin. It also touches on Yeager’s brush with obscenity laws, where she managed to avoid going to trial by bringing to court a copy of Hustler that was being sold in the courthouse. Both of these were far more interesting stories and gave more insight into Bunny’s life and work than Larry King reminiscing about being seduced by a caller in one of his early radio shows, which had nothing to do with her at all. 

Toward the end of the movie, Sarahjane Blum, the current owner of Bunny’s work, says, “One thing that is more taboo than women’s sexuality and women’s bodies is women’s ambition.” Bunny Yeager was an ambitious woman. She almost single-handedly popularized the bikini. She was the first woman photographer for Playboy. She was among the first to carefully compose a selfie. Naked Ambition does an excellent job of detailing the incredible accomplishments of this impressive woman. Where it comes up short is connecting the ways all of these successes were seen as taboo and how that affected her as a woman and an artist.

Naked Ambition will be released in select US theaters on September 12, 2025.