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Yvonne De Carlo

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Yvonne De Carlo Biography

yvonne de carlo
  • Birth Name: Peggy Yvonne Middleton
  • Birth Place: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  • Date of Birth / Zodiac Sign: 09/01/1922, Virgo
  • Date of Death: 01/08/2007
  • Profession: Actor; dancer; singer
Although she was one of Hollywood's most devastatingly beautiful B-movie sexpots in the '40s and '50s, De Carlo will forever be remembered as the morbid matriarch on the goofy sitcom The Munsters. Of course, when this Canada native took the part, she had no idea Lily Munster would become her signature role. But while the series died after just two seasons, it lived forever via reruns and earned her generations of fans. Yet De Carlo had a career both before and after her years at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Raised by a single mother who enrolled her in dance lessons as a child, De Carlo was still a teen when she began landing bit movie parts, finally winning her first lead in the unremarkable 1945 Western Salome, Where She Danced, in which she played — as she often would — an exotic seductress. While she occasionally appeared in more prestigious projects — she was Moses' wife in The Ten Commandments and a fabulous femme fatale in the film noir Criss Cross — she was usually called upon to do little more than look gorgeous and act campy. The highlight of her post-Munsters work came in 1971 when she portrayed an aging bombshell in Stephen Sondheim's Follies, in which she defiantly belted out the anthem "I'm Still Here." The title nicely summed up her career, which, though not always distinguished (particularly toward the end, when the newly overweight star popped up in a string of grade-Z horror flicks such as American Gothic), did span an impressive half a century. She had been retired from showbiz for over a decade when she died of heart failure in 2007.
Yvonne De Carlo Fast Facts:
  • When she was 15 her mother took her to Hollywood to break into show business. Unsuccessful, they returned to Canada where she began dancing at night clubs.
  • Was named Miss Venice Beach in a 1941 beauty pageant.
  • Took the role of Lily Munster to help pay for medical bills after her husband, stuntman Bob Morgan, was injured.
  • In 1971, she starred in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies; he wrote the classic song "I'm Still Here" just for her.
  • Published Yvonne: An Autobiography in 1987, in which she listed 22 of her lovers including Howard Hughes, Burt Lancaster, Robert Stack, Robert Taylor, Billy Wilder and Aly Khan.
    Yvonne De Carlo Relationships:
  • Bob Morgan - Ex-husband
  • Bruce Morgan - Son
  • Marie Middleton - Mother
  • Michael Morgan - Son

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San Francisco Story starring Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo
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