The Untold Truth Of Yvonne De Carlo

She's certainly best known today for her role on a perpetually repeated, high-concept '60s television sitcom hit, but Yvonne De Carlo had already built a varied, impressive, and illustrious career in the epic, exotic films churned out by Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Forever TV's bride of Frankenstein's creature, as the monstrous, motherly, and goofy Lily Munster on "The Munsters," De Carlo made an impression on small-screen viewers both young and old, or rather the ones who remembered her from her much different roles in huge movies including "The Ten Commandments," "The Sword and the Cross," and "Band of Angels."

De Carlo was a star two times over, and a show business survivor, with a career that lasted from the days of the studio system to '80s-era cheese. Also a singer and a dancer, De Carlo did it all, and she became the toast of Hollywood along the way.

Determined to make her daughter the entertainment star that she never was, Marie De Carlo took a teenage Margaret Middleton from Vancouver to Los Angeles in the 1930s. Looking to supplement her daughter's exhibited natural singing talent, Maria enrolled her daughter in a dance academy, which she attended in addition to a regular school. Maria worked as a server and took on other gigs to support the two until her daughter was discovered by Hollywood. When their visas ran out without a breakthrough, the pair returned to Vancouver, a cycle they went through three times.

Whenever they were back home in Vancouver, both women lived with Maria's parents, Michael and Margaret De Carlo. It's their last name that Margaret Middleton would use as half of her stage name, adding the De Carlo to her middle name, Yvonne, to create Yvonne De Carlo.

Beginning with "Salome, Where She Danced" in 1945, Yvonne De Carlo became Universal Studios' go-to actor to play vampy temptresses and duplicitous femme fatales in films a little salacious and marketed as exotic. The Canadian actor played women from many races and cultures in films like "Song of Scheherazade," "Slave Girl," "Casbah," "River Lady," and "The Desert Hawk," along with big roles in various 1950s Westerns.

Solidly a stalwart of popular but not terribly well-regarded pictures, De Carlo moved into more prestigious fare when she was personally selected by Academy Award-nominated director Cecil B. DeMille to portray Sephora, wife of Moses (Charlton Heston), in the 1956 biblical epic "The Ten Commandments." He'd take notice of De Carlo in a flop she'd starred in back in 1953. "I had done a picture at Metro titled 'Sombrero' which wasn't too much of a hit. But I had portrayed a saintly type of woman similar to what DeMille had in mind for Sephora," De Carlo told syndicated columnist Hedda Hopper (via The Spokesman-Review). "He saw the picture, was very much impressed, and promptly said: 'You're it.'" "The Ten Commandments" received seven Academy Award nominations and wound up the highest-grossing film of 1956.

In the staid, socially conservative United States of the mid-20th century, it simply wasn't deemed proper for an unmarried woman, especially a public figure like a famous actor, to be open and frank about the physical side of her romantic life. For example, movie star Loretta Young became pregnant during a non-marital dalliance with Clark Gable and with the assistance of her Hollywood handlers, made it appear that she'd adopted her own biological child. But in keeping with her movie persona as a captivating seductress, Yvonne De Carlo allowed herself to be marketed as a very eligible woman who was seen in public, and written about in gossip columns, with a long succession of suitors.

Many of these relationships were short-lived, but they were authentic and passionate. In her 1987 memoir "Yvonne: An Autobiography," De Carlo thoroughly and explicitly detailed about two dozen such encounters with famous and powerful men. "It was so spontaneous and so explosive, I thought I was playing a scene from a blazing romantic novel," she recalled of what happened the night of her first date with Burt Lancaster. "We somehow managed to consummate a relationship, and it wasn't bad. In fact, it got better as time went on. It might have been on the clinical side, but that was the way with Howard Hughes," De Carlo wrote of her affair with the pilot and millionaire. Her post-Hughes rebound fling: Robert Stack. She also took up with opera singer Cesare Siepi and Prince Aly Khan of Persia.

Of the three adult cast members on "The Munsters," two were closely associated with their TV work — "Car 54, Where Are You?" stars Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis. The other, Yvonne De Carlo, was a movie star whose dramatic career was on a descent from its peak in the 1950s. Gwynne and Lewis weren't happy with her casting. "We went down to the producers and screamed bloody murder," Lewis said in "The Munsters: A Trip Down Mockingbird Lane," by Stephen Cox. "Fred and I thought she would not be right in the part at all. Experience told us we were wrong." Nevertheless, De Carlo acted the part of the aloof movie star in the early days of the series. "Yvonne played better-than-thou for a while," Gwynne said in 1984 (via "The Munsters: A Trip Down Mockingbird Lane"). De Carlo would purposely show up late during filming, pausing production as cast and crew awaited her arrival.

In the middle of the first season of "The Munsters," actor Beverley Owen abandoned the role of Marilyn Munster, and producers replaced her with Pat Priest, who quickly earned De Carlo's animosity. "I remember Yvonne saying to me one day, 'There's one thing I want you to know, young lady. Don't you ever upstage me!'" Priest said in "The Munsters: A Trip Down Mockingbird Lane." "At that point I didn't know what I had done. The director had asked me to step forward," Priest explained, adding that her co-star eventually grew friendly toward her.

Yvonne De Carlo may have agreed to portray a monster on a sitcom, but she wasn't necessarily or immediately excited about it. "I must admit that I thought very carefully before deciding to do this show," De Carlo said to the Los Angeles Times in 1964 (via "The Munsters: A Trip Down Mockingbird Lane"), a few months after "The Munsters" debuted. "Because once you sign the contract, you're stuck." Her apprehension grew when she contacted the makeup team to find out what she'd be in for on a daily basis and what the desired effect would look like. "When they said I would have a green face with sunken cheeks, I began to worry."

James Bawden, a reporter who interviewed De Carlo to promote a TV series in 1975, claims that the actor had a breakdown when she first transformed into Lily Munster. "She said when they put her in the green makeup, she burst into tears," Bawden told Fox News. "She said, 'So it's come to this?'" De Carlo soon came to accept and appreciate the role. "She went on, 'In Hollywood, you have to roll with the punches if you want to keep working.'"

De Carlo also felt significantly better about her new high-profile role when she realized that the "Munsters" crew had no plans to make her look hideous onscreen. "They decided to glamorize me," she said to the LA Times. "My makeup doesn't take longer than a complete glamour makeup for the movies."

Having made it as a big movie star in the 1940s, and a prominent television presence in the 1960s with "The Munsters," Yvonne De Carlo set out to conquer another medium in the 1970s. In doing so, she enjoyed a major comeback.

Following a successful four-month stint in 1968 and 1969 as Dolly Gallagher Levi in the touring version of the smash hit musical "Hello, Dolly!", De Carlo landed the part of Carlotta Campion in the 1971 original Broadway production of "Follies," with music and lyrics by the esteemed Stephen Sondheim. The show would earn 11 nominations at the Tony Awards and win seven. None of those were for De Carlo, but she made her mark on the musical theater classic as the originator of the modern Broadway standard "I'm Still Here," sung from the point of view of a cynical and seasoned veteran entertainer.

In April 1987, Yvonne De Carlo spilled a lot of secrets about her life and the lives of the celebrities who populated Hollywood in its "Golden Age" of the 1940s and 1950s. With assistance from writer Doug Warren, De Carlo published her tell-all memoir for St. Martin's Press, "Yvonne: An Autobiography." As was once customary for actors and celebrities, De Carlo ceded most of the writing of what went to press to Warren, but it wasn't for a lack of effort. "As far as my writing is concerned — I tried. But I think that when they have an established author, they usually use his stuff more," De Carlo explained of St. Martin's to the Orlando Sentinel. "I put a lot of stuff in there, but they didn't use much of it."

As a result of publisher interference, the completed "Yvonne: An Autobiography" includes very little information or reflection on the actor's upbringing and early career milestones. Instead, the book became primarily a mildly scandalous series of anecdotes about De Carlo's many famous lovers and exes. "They insisted on that. I didn't want to be nasty." De Carlo and Warren describe in great detail her encounters with more than 20 celebrity men, including Burt Lancaster, Howard Hughes, and Robert Stack. "Yvonne: An Autobiography" is dedicated to "All the kings, princes, lords, millionaires, and truck drivers I have known."

In what would turn out to be the last decade of her life, Yvonne De Carlo endured a string of personal and familial tragedies that profoundly affected her health and well-being. With her husband Robert Morgan, De Carlo raised two sons, Bruce and Michael Morgan. In 1997, Michael suffered a stroke, and the brain damage he incurred killed him at the age of 39. "It just preyed on her mind," author James Bawden told Fox News. "All she would talk about was her son." Arguably, the stress and distress over the premature death of her son was a factor in De Carlo also enduring a stroke, just one year after her son experienced a similar medical episode. Already largely retired from acting, De Carlo was unable to ever work in film or television again.

De Carlo moved into the charitable Motion Picture and Television Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. In 2007, the 84-year-old star of screens big and small died. The cause: natural cause, attributed to old age.