Yvette Mimieux

Hollywood's
familiar label,
"Star of the Future," never was more appropriately applied than in the case of eighteen-year-old Yvette Mimieux.

The petite blonde actress (her name is pronounced "meem-yuh") won a unique screen opportunity when she was selected to play a girl of the far, far, future -- 802,701, to be exact -- in the screen version of H. G. Wells famed story, "The Time Machine."

(Pictures: San Onofre Beach, California, October 3, 1963: Yvette catches her breath during training for her role as a surf-mad girl on the Dr. Kildare TV show.)

The imaginative picture was filmed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Producer-Director George Pal, whose previous films include an adaptation of Wells's "War of the Worlds."

"I keep pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming," she says. Yvette, at 5'4" and 107 pounds, is a curvaceous girl with blue eyes and a peaches-and-cream complexion.

A multi-beauty award-winner, she has been named Miss Harbor Day (1957), Los Angeles Art Directors Queen (1958), Los Angeles Boat Show Queen (1958) and National Electric Week Queen (1959).

Yvette is a native of Los Angeles. Her father is French, her mother Spanish.When George Pal saw her, he decided she was ideal for the role of Weena, girl of the future in "The Time Machine." His description of her is, "A cross between a fairy princess and Brigitte Bardot."

The actress' role in "The Time Machine" is that of a girl of the Eloi civilization of 802,701. The Eloi are envisioned as being petite and blonde.

In the film, she is kidnapped by the Morlocks, half-man, half-ape monsters, who live beneath the ground and prey on the Eloi.

Ultimately she is rescued by Rod Taylor, the story's Time Traveler, who journeys from the year 1899 to fall in love with Yvette some 8,000 centuries later.

It's apropos that Yvette is playing an out-of-this-world role in 'The Time Machine," because originally, she was discovered virtually out-of-the-blue by Hollywood press agent Jim Byron.

She was riding horseback on the outskirts of Los Angeles when a helicopter, having engine trouble, set down in front of her. Byron spotted her, promptly forgot about his 'copter problems, and asked if she'd like to be in pictures.*

*Web Note: Hands up, all who believe this story! Nobody noticed her at all those beauty contests she won?

It was Director VincenteMinnelli
who directed her screen test. He says, "Yvette is quick to learn and with her basic dramatic ability shows definite promise as an actress." With two foremost movie-makers like Pal and Minnelli in her corner, the present seems to be catching up rapidly with this "girl of the future."

Like the mannequin in Filby's window... Yvette's beauty is timeless.

LEFT: From Aerobic Yoga - The Cosmic Fountain of Youth Workout. With Szabolics Atzel-Bethlen and Yvette Mimieux (1997).

Harper's Bazaar Yoga Workout With Yvette Mimieux (1995)

In 1968, The Connoisseur Society released an LP entitled "Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil (Les fleurs du mal)" as the "first of a series of recordings featuring the brilliant American actress, Yvette Mimieux, in collaboration with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, greatest living musician of India." The genesis for the LP was a meeting between Miss Mimieux, Alan Silver (the record's producer), and Ali Akbar Khan. Miss Mimieux said that she had always wanted to record Baudelaire, and Ali Akbar Khan said, "If you tell me the mood and meaning of each poem... I can produce a raga that fits the mood of each poem. Noted jazz critic Nat Hentoff said in the liner notes that "It is like no other recording of poetry that has ever been released."

Click on the Cover to hear an MP3 excerpt from the album.

The "equal time" web guideline requires us to note that five years later, Rod Taylor released an LP of his own songs, "Rod Taylor," on the Asylum label, which featured an all-star group of musicians including Bonnie Bramlett (Delaney and Bonnie) and Joni Mitchell on background vocals - as well as Ry Cooder and Bryndle's Kenny Edwards and Andrew Gold!