Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922
in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was three when her father
abandoned the family. Her mother turned to waitressing in a restaurant
to make ends meet--a rough beginning for an actress who would, one day,
be one of Hollywood's elite. Yvonne's mother wanted her to be in the
entertainment field and enrolled her in a local dance school and also
saw that she studied dramatics. Yvonne was not shy in the least. She
was somewhat akin to Colleen Moore
who, like herself, entertained the neighborhood with impromptu
productions. In 1937, when Yvonne was 15, her mother took her to
Hollywood to try for fame and fortune, but nothing came of it and they
returned to Canada. They came back to Hollywood in 1940, where Yvonne
would dance in chorus lines at night while she checked in at the
studios by day in search of film work. After appearing in unbilled
parts in three short films, she finally got a part in a feature.
Although the film
Harvard, Here I Come! (1941)
was quite lame, Yvonne glowed in her brief appearance as a bathing
beauty. The rest of 1942 and 1943 saw her in more uncredited roles in
films that did not quite set Hollywood on fire. In
The Deerslayer (1943), she played
Wah-Tah. The role did not amount to much, but it was much better than
the ones she had been handed previously. The next year was about the
same as the previous two years. She played small parts as either
secretaries, someone's girlfriend, native girls or office clerks. Most
aspiring young actresses would have given up and gone home in defeat,
but not Yvonne. She trudged on. The next year, started out the same,
with mostly bit parts, but later that year, she landed the title role
in
Salome, Where She Danced (1945)
for Universal Pictures. While critics were less than thrilled with the
film, it was at long last her big break, and the film was a success for
Universal. Now she was rolling.
Her next film was the western comedy
Die Herberge zum roten Pferd (1945) as Lorena
Dumont. After a year off the screen in 1946, she returned in 1947 as
Cara de Talavera in
Lied des Orients (1947),
and many agreed that the only thing worth watching in the film was
Yvonne. Her next film was the highly regarded
Burt Lancaster prison film
Zelle R 17 (1947). Time after time,
Yvonne continued to pick up leading roles, in such pictures as
Die falsche Sklavin (1947),
Die schwarze Maske (1948),
Casbah - Verbotene Gassen (1948) and
Rivalen am reißenden Strom (1948). She had a meaty
role in Gewagtes Alibi (1949), a
gangster movie, as the ex-wife of a hoodlum. At the start of the 1950s,
Yvonne enjoyed continued success in lead roles. Her talents were again
showcased in movies such as
Der Wüstenfalke (1950),
Die silberne Stadt (1951) and
Der rote Engel (1952). Her last film
in 1952 was
Herrin der Gesetzlosen (1952), a picture
most fans and critics agree is best forgotten.
In 1956, she appeared in the film that would immortalize her best,
Die zehn Gebote (1956).
She played Sephora, the wife of Moses
(Charlton Heston). The film was,
unquestionably, a super smash, and is still shown on television today.
Her performance served as a springboard to another fine role, this time
as Amantha Starr in
Weint um die Verdammten (1957). In the late
1950s and early 1960s, Yvonne appeared on such television series as
Bonanza (1959) and
Die Leute von der Shiloh Ranch (1962). With film roles drying up, she took the role of Lily Munster in the smash
series Die Munsters (1964).
However, she still was not completely through with the big screen.
Appearances in such films as
MacLintock (1963),
Die sechs Verdächtigen (1968),
The Seven Minutes (1971) and
Blutspur ins Totenreich (1976)
kept her before the eyes of the movie-going public. Yvonne De Carlo died
at age 84 of natural causes on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills,
California.
