In Remembrance: Yvonne De Carlo

     Yvonne De Carlo, the 1940s bombshell actress who experienced a career resurgence in the 1960s on television as the vampiric matriarch of The Munsters, has passed away on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills, CA. She was 84.

     Born Peggy Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, De Carlo’s father abandoned his family when she was only three. Despite her mother struggling to make ends meet, she was sent to take dancing lessons. As a teen, she dropped out of high school to dance in nightclubs and at local theaters, before moving to Los Angeles with her mother.

     De Carlo was signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1942, though the studio only used her in small walk-on roles in over 20 pictures. Her only role of note was that of Princess Wah-Tah in the 1943 adaptation The Deerslayer. Dropped by Paramount, she wound up at Universal Studios where she was spotted by producer Walter Wanger, who immediately cast her in the western Salome, Where She Danced (1945). The studio capitalized on De Carlo’s slightly exotic features and hourglass figure to cast her in numerous films that saw her in a harem dress such as Song Of Scheherazade, Slave Girl (both 1947) and Casbah (1948). She was also cast in numerous westerns including Frontier Gal (1946), Black Bart (1948), Calamity Jane And Sam Bass (1949) and Silver City (1951). She also appeared as a formidable femme fatale in such film noir thrillers as Brute Force (1947) and Criss Cross (1949). Her last film at Universal was the forgettable Hurricane Smith (1952).

     In 1956, director Cecil B. DeMille cast De Carlo as Sephora, wife of Charlton Heston’s Moses in the Biblical epic The Ten Commandments. Her dramatic work in the role led to roles in such dramas as Death Of A Scoundrel (1956) and Band Of Angels (1957) and the western McLintock! (1963) with John Wayne.

     As the 1950s gave way to the 60s, De Carlo found film offers drying up. Turning to television, De Carlo guest-starred on several series before taking the role of Lily Munster on the comedy series The Munsters in 1964. The role would soon eclipse anything she had achieved to that point in her career. The show was spun off to a theatrical feature Munster, Go Home in 1966.

     De Carlo still managed to land films roles going into 1970s, mostly in exploitation films such as Blazing Stewardesses (1975), Satan’s Cheerleaders (1976) and Nocturna (1979) or comedies like The Man With Bogart’s Face (1980) and Class Reunion (1982).