Movie stars I loved as a kid - Yvonne De Carlo

I saw De Carlo when she was a babe in the 1950s and didn't see her as Lily Munster till I saw reruns on TV after I came to the USA. She made 60 movies in the late 1940s and 1950s before doing The Munsters - and I saw most of them as a kid. She was stunningly beautiful. I really loved this lady.

Yvonne De Carlo (September 1, 1922 – January 8, 2007):

In her six-decade career, her most prolific appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as Salome Where She Danced and The Ten Commandments, opposite Charlton Heston. In the 1960s, she gained a whole new generation of fans, playing "Lily Munster" on CBS television series The Munsters, opposite Fred Gwynne.
...
De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her maternal grandfather, Michael de Carlo, was Sicilian-born, and her maternal grandmother, Margaret Purvis, was Scottish-born. Little Margaret was just a toddler when her father beat a hasty departure only one step ahead of the law. Her father abandoned her family when she was 3. While her mother was away with her boyfriends, Margaret lived with her grandparents.

She had a very hard early life being shuttled around by her ambitious mother between Canada and California, dancing in sleazy nightclubs. I think her early hardships were what made her witty and eccentric later in life.

Her break came in 1945 playing the title role in Salome, Where She Danced. Though not a critical success, it was a box office favorite, and De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Of the role, she was less sure, saying of her entrance, "I came through these beaded curtains, wearing a Japanese kimono and a Japanese headpiece, and then performed a Siamese dance. Nobody seemed to know quite why."
...
In December 1941, the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor signaled America's entrance into World War II. During this period she engaged in morale boosting performances for U.S. servicemen. De Carlo was a favorite leading lady in the 1940s, and a recipient of many letters from GI's.
...
As the female lead opposite Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross, she played a femme fatale, and her career began to ascend. The 1957 film Band of Angels featured her opposite Clark Gable in an American Civil War story, along with Sidney Poitier and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

The actress worked steadily for the next several years, although many of the films failed to advance her career.

Cast in The Ten Commandments (1956) in a leading role (as Zipporah, also spelled Sephora, Moses' wife), De Carlo became part of a major hit. The film was a huge success and De Carlo was praised for her restrained work in a feature in which several other performances were considered somewhat over-the-top.
...
The year 1964 was a rocky one for De Carlo, as she was deeply in debt. After having worked for over 30 years, her film career came to a sudden end, and she was suffering from depression. Her life changed, however, when she signed a contract with Universal Studios after receiving an offer to perform the female lead role in the cult sitcom The Munsters opposite Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster.
...
"In Hollywood I was on cloud nine all the time. After I made my hit in Salome, Universal sent me to New York so I could learn to be a proper movie star."

Asked if she was really nervous about residing in New York City: "I'm from Hollywood, I'm too dumb to be nervous about New York."
...
In her autobiography, published in 1987, she listed 22 "intimate friends", including Aly Khan, Billy Wilder, Burt Lancaster, Howard Hughes, Robert Stack and Robert Taylor.
...
On her meeting with Howard Hughes after he had watched Salome Where She Danced (1945): "A man came over ... he said 'Mr. Hughes would like to meet you.' Well, I was not too much aware of Mr. Hughes at the time --- who he was or anything. So, I said, 'Oh, yes, fine!' And so, I looked and thought, 'Wow, this would be a terrific boyfriend for my aunt.'"

When asked in 1972 about her affair with Howard Hughes before he turned into a legendary recluse: "Howard taught me how to land a plane and how to take off. But he never taught me anything about flying in between. He thought that I had learned the difficult parts, and that was enough."

This pic is huge. Click it if you want to see just how gorgeous she was.