Actress Yvette Vickers’ first screen appearance was a tiny one,  as a giggling girl in Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Blvd.,” the story of a one-time movie queen, Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, living in a decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard and dreaming of a comeback.  It is doubtful that Vickers  expected to one day be a tragic faded star herself. The mummified body of 82-year-old Vickers was found last week in her Los Angeles apartment by a neighbor who was concerned that she had not see Vickers for a while. Cops said Vickers could have been dead for a year and that foul play was not expected.   

A Playboy playmate of the month in 1959, Vickers, a voluptuous blonde, achieved cult status for two B-movies, “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” (1958) and “Attack of the Giant Leeches” (1959). In the first, she’s a floozy who has an affair with a married man. Neither lover lives to the end of the movie, thanks to the fury of a scorned wife who turns into a 50-foot-tall woman after an encounter with an alien. In “Leeches,” she’s a cheating wife done in by the titular creatures.

People who knew Vickers told ABC News said she lived a dual life, one as a Desmond-like recluse,  another as a vivid storyteller who charmed film festival audiences. She regularly acted in TV Westerns, but at one time was best known for her 15-year relationship with actor Jim Hutton and her affair with Cary Grant.