Celeste Yarnall

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Celeste Yarnall

Celeste Yarnall

Celeste Yarnall

Date of Birth

Date of Birth: July 26, 1944
Date of Passing: October 07, 2018
Birthplace: Long Beach, California
Obituary: Hollywood Reporter

Celeste Yarnall led a multi-faceted career. She began as a model, spokesperson, and actress fresh out of high school. She was discovered by Rick and Ozzie Nelson while walking past their offices at General Service Studios in Hollywood and appeared in an episode of Ozzie & Harriet in 1962. Jerry Lewis personally selected this young beauty casting her as one of the students in The Nutty Professor. Paramount then cast her in a cameo role in A New Kind Of Love with Paul Newman. She also appeared with Jack Lemmon in Under the Yum Yum Tree.

Celeste Yarnall led a multi-faceted career. She began as a model, spokesperson, and actress fresh out of high school. She was discovered by Rick and Ozzie Nelson while walking past their offices at General Service Studios in Hollywood and appeared in an episode of Ozzie & Harriet in 1962. Jerry Lewis personally selected this young beauty casting her as one of the students in The Nutty Professor. Paramount then cast her in a cameo role in A New Kind Of Love with Paul Newman. She also appeared with Jack Lemmon in Under the Yum Yum Tree. In 1964, she became the last elected Miss Rheingold receiving 20,000,000 votes from her fans. She moved from Los Angeles to New York, and traveled all over the Eastern Seaboard making personal appearances, doing television and radio commercials and print ads as the Rheingold Beer spokesperson. Her career as a top print model and television commercial spokesperson skyrocketed.

Celeste returned to Los Angeles in 1965 to pursue her acting career and has numerous feature films to her credit such as co-starring in Live a Little, Love a Little opposite Elvis Presley and playing the beautiful vampire, Diane, in The Velvet Vampire for Roger Corman. She starred in cult favorites Eve, in which she played Christopher Lee's long lost jungle goddess granddaughter, and The Beast of Blood opposite John Ashley and soon became recognized as a popular scream queen. Other notable film appearances include Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice and Around The World Under The Sea for Ivan Tors Productions. Celeste guest starred on many television shows including Star Trek as Yeoman Martha Landon (Chekov's love interest) in The Apple, Bonanza, Hogan's Heroes, It Takes a Thief, Land of the Giants, Love American Style, The F.B.I., Mannix, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild, Wild West, Bewitched, and the Columbo pilot, as well as appearing in numerous other productions. Celeste was selected as a Deb Star at the Hollywood Stars of Tomorrow awards in 1967 and was acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival as the Foreign Press's Most Photogenic Beauty of the Year. Celeste was also the National Association of Theatre Owners' Most Promising New Star of 1968. Consequently, her lovely face was splashed on magazine covers and newspapers all over the world.

In 1970, Celeste's beautiful daughter, Camilla, was born. Celeste divorced her manager/husband and continued her acting career appearing in Scorpio and The Mechanic. However, she began to feel that, as a single mom, a career change might be in order. So, between 1973 and 1993, Celeste segued into the commercial real estate business and specialized in assisting mainly entertainment companies either lease or purchase their office headquarters. She became enormously successful, eventually owning and operating her own firm, Celeste Yarnall & Associates. She continued to do some commercials, television (Melrose Place, Civil War, Knots Landing, Sisters), and film roles such as Driving Me Crazy, Midnight Kiss, the remake of Born Yesterday with Melanie Griffith, Fatal Beauty with Whoopie Goldberg, and Funny About Love directed by Leonard Nimoy.

Celeste was featured on the cover of Fantasy Femmes of Sixty's Cinema and is one of the 20+ actresses interviewed by its author, Tom Lisanti. Celeste is also featured in Lisanti's second book, Film Fatales.

On the business end of show biz, Celeste managed several talented screenwriters, including one of the writers of On Deadly Ground starring Steven Seagal. Having always loved and lived with cats and dogs, in 1993, Celeste embarked on another exciting challenge - to simultaneously write a holistic healthcare book for cats entitled Cat Care, Naturally - Celeste Yarnall's Complete Guide To Holistic Health Care For Cats (Charles E. Tuttle Publishing), [The Complete Guide to Holistic Cat Care] [Natural Dog Care] as well as breed, raise, and show eleven generations of championship Tonkinese and Oriental Shorthair cats reared on an all natural diet and supplements and the principles outlined in her book. Also in 1998, Celeste earned a Ph.D. in nutrition from Pacific Western University. Her second book, Natural Dog Care, was released in Spring of '98 along with a paperback version of her cat book now entitled Natural Cat Care. Celeste's latest book, The Complete Guide to Holistic Cat Care was co-written with noted holistic veterinarian and researcher Dr. Jean Hofve, for Quarry Publications, and was the recipient of The Cat Writer's Association's Muse Award for 2010.

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