Such is the case with death.
It’s such a cosmic injustice, so patently unfair that we’re on the downhill slope by the time we hit our 40s – for a lot of us, there are still another 40 years to go – that I have an odd sympathy for people who believe in a higher power. How do you square such unfairness with your goals, your hopes? Unless you’re one of the chosen few who ages gracefully, who avoids debilitating health problems, then the aging process is one of diminishing returns. Wrinkled skin, sunspots, thinning hair, weight gain, poor eyesight and hearing, osteoporosis, walkers and wheelchairs, and then the ultimate indignity of memory loss, and a final few years at home or in a home, as the friends and family come around saying their goodbyes, the body shrinking, shriveling, and finally silently collapsing. Such damn ugliness.
Yet, for the majority of us, the psychic toll of aging is the more malevolent bugbear. Despite evolving intellectually to the point where we can split the atom, nearly wipe small pox off the face of the earth, and launch giant telescopes into space, brazenly peering into the face of god itself, we simply were not given the tools, the emotional resources to deal with the awareness of our own mortality. It’s a hard line to toe, balancing responsibilities with the need for spontaneity – trying to build a life – knowing that all this will be over sooner rather than later. The logical person, perhaps, would turn this knowledge around, use it as an excuse to work harder, construct a more solid legacy. Something to be proud of.
But humans aren’t logical. And more often this psychic toll brings a terrible sadness, a crippling paralysis in the face of approaching nonexistence, and finally, a distasteful irony: the towel is thrown in so early that years are spent wasted, years that – even though they constituted life’s final act – still could’ve been creatively fertile, if we’d just taken a little care with ourselves.
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The L.A. Coroner estimates Yvette Vickers was dead for close to a year before neighbor Susan Savage, noticing the mail piling up in her mailbox on Westwanda Drive, above Hollywood, let herself into the aging actress’ modest home. Savage found a body that was, for all intents and purposes, mummified. In a full year, there was no one in the world who thought to check on Yvette and see how she was doing.
For those of us who grew up with a huge crush on this beautiful woman, it was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow that the floozy from Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, the bewitching blonde in the sexy dress who seduces William Hudson, died forgotten, with barely a trace of dignity.
But Yvette Vickers was not equipped to cope with growing old. The psychic toll was too much for the kid from Kansas City, MO, who at one point was directed by Cagney, and thought she was on her way to stardom. Instead, a short career consisting mostly of bit parts led to a different sort of immortality; she is remembered not by the general population, but by fanboys and sci-fi geeks for playing home wreckers in Woman and 1959’s Attack of the Giant Leeches.
An appearance in Playboy’s centerfold as the July 1959 Playmate of the Month failed to interest Hollywood producers, and Vickers' career frustratingly stalled. She married twice, and had numerous flings, most notably with Cary Grant, and settled into a career in real estate.
I suspect somewhere along the way Yvette realized she’d played her hand wrong, being a sex kitten to the stars instead of really working on her craft. Although she happily attended fanboy conventions in the 90s and 2000s, an undiagnosed mental illness, no doubt exacerbated by heavy drinking, made for a dark final act. Certain she was being stalked, and delusional that the conventions were cutting her off, Yvette drank hard, put on so much weight as to be almost unrecognizable, and systematically slammed the door on what few friends she still had. Her Benedict Canyon neighbors didn’t think to keep tabs on her. "We're all longtime neighbors here and we respect each others' privacy," said one. “Perhaps too much."
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In a more perfect world, death would be easy, a peaceful thing. Maybe even poetic. But we are stuck on a planet short on perfection. And when someone you love goes out as badly as Yvette Vickers did, you have to remind yourself that death is so often an ugly thing, and when you think of Yvette, her free fall into the abyss shouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind. Those final years were a small part of a longer journey, and even if she did play her hand wrong, it’s ok; we all do that at least from time to time, if not more frequently. And there was a time that this magnificent woman was young, beautiful, and seized our imaginations as we flipped through the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, or caught a midnight showing of Attack of the Giant Leeches. Her first appearance in Leeches – clad in sexy robe while seductively brushing her teeth, if such a thing is possible – is every bit as show-stopping as Lana Turner’s first scene in The Postman Always Rings Twice. I wish she could’ve been happy enough with that.
