Los Angeles – Yvonne De Carlo, who played Moses’ wife in “The Ten Commandments” but achieved her greatest popularity on TV’s “The Munsters,” has died. She was 84.
De Carlo died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Los Angeles, longtime friend and television producer Kevin Burns said Wednesday.
De Carlo, whose shapely figure helped launch her career in B-movie desert adventures and Westerns, rose to more important roles in the 1950s. Later, she had a key role in a landmark Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.”
But for TV viewers, she will always be known as Lily Munster in the 1964-66 slapstick horror- movie spoof “The Munsters.” The series (the name allegedly derived from “fun-monsters”) offered a gallery of Universal Pictures grotesques, including Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, in a cobwebbed gothic setting.
Lily, vampirelike in a white gown, presided over the faux scary household and was a rock for her gentle but bumbling husband, Herman, played by 6-foot-5 actor Fred Gwynne.
While it lasted only two years, the series had a long life in syndication and resulted in two feature movies, “Munster Go Home!” (1966) and “The Munsters’ Revenge” (1981, for TV).
De Carlo was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sept. 1, 1922 (some sources say 1924). Abandoned by her father, she was raised by her mother in poor circumstances. The girl took dancing lessons and dropped out of high school to work in night clubs and local theaters. She continued dancing in clubs when she and her mother moved to Los Angeles.
Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract in 1942. Dropped by Paramount after 20 minor roles, she landed at Universal, which cast her as the B-picture version of the studio’s sultry star Maria Montez.
