Friday, October 23, 2009

1313 Mockingbird Lane...

Can you guess this gorgeous doll is? Don't cheat...(don't look at the bottom of this post just yet!)



if you guessed Yvonne de Carlo best known as playing the character of Lily Munster on the CBS series The Munsters you guessed right!

The daughter of an aspiring actress, Marie De Carlo, and a salesman, William Middleton, De Carlo was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton in Point Gray, British Columbia, on September 1, 1922. Her father abandoned the family in 1925 when De Carlo was only 3. Afterward, DeCarlo's mother worked as a waitress to support the family. Nonetheless, she took great interest in her daughter's budding talents as a dancer. In the late 1930's, DeCarlo and her mother made their way to Hollywood. Soon, DeCarlo found work as a chorus girl, and began making the rounds at casting calls, trying to get into the movies.

By the time she celebrated her 19th birthday, she had begun landing small film roles, first at Columbia Studios and then Paramount. She appeared in about 20 films between 1941 and 1944, but only in small roles and bit parts. DeCarlo had to wait four years for her breakthrough role in the 1945 Universal Studios Technicolor film Salome, Where She Danced.

Her starring role in the 1948 western Black Bart helped De Carlo bridge the gap between costume dramas and the western genre.

DeCarlo's success in Black Bart helped change her image, so much so that she soon became typecast in westerns and throughout the 1950s, she made scores of westerns.

1956 defined a turning point in De Carlo’s career when she was cast in Cecil B. DeMille’s landmark production of The Ten Commandments. DeCarlo’s performance as Moses’ wife Sephora, opposite Hollywood icons Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, marked a place for her in films. Her next project paired her with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier in the flat costume epic Band of Angels (1957).

In the early 1960s, De Carlo starred in a string of B-features, which inspired little interest in audiences. With the demise of her film career, the struggling actress made a transition to the small screen.

In 1964, she was chosen to play the ghoulish mom in a pilot for CBS. Her portrayal of Lily Munster in the horror-spoof sitcom The Munsters (1964-66) marked her television debut, and introduced her to a whole new generation of audiences.

De Carlo was married to Hollywood stuntman, Robert Morgan. The couple had two sons, Bruce and Michael, before they divorced in the mid-1970s. De Carlo died of heart failure on January 8, 2007 at age 84 in Woodland Hills, California...




3 comments:

Unknown said...

Huba Hubba! I've always LOVED Yvonne DeCarlo in anything and EVERYTHING she's ever done!! Such a beautiful and extremely talented woman!

And all that jazz said...

Miss Yvonne is one my all time faves - great photos! Love her!!! xoxo

kenny morgan said...

She was my aunt...and she was a beautiful woman. My uncle bob who was a stunt man for MGM. I always like looking at her pics



ken morgan