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Yvonne de Carlo

 

Yvonne De Carlo, who died on Monday aged 84, was in the 1940s and 1950s Hollywood's notion of an exotic Middle Eastern beauty and was repeatedly cast as an Arab princess, a dancing girl or the jewel of the harem; later she became familiar to television audiences as Lily, the vampiric matriarch of the Munster family.

Yvonne de Carlo's milky white skin and studio make-up never looked remotely Arabic. It was a convention of the time that in "sword and sandal" epics, of which she made a great number, the heroine should be as much like an idealised American girl as possible. This was no challenge. Possessed of a striking face and figure, she was one of many Hollywood starlets dubbed "the most beautiful woman in the world".

Publicists emphasised this line, and as she matured, still a spinster, they cast her as the most eligible girl in Hollywood. Gossip linked her with Howard Hughes, the actor Howard Duff, the Shah of Persia, the opera stars Jerome Hines and Cesare Siepi, Aly Khan, and even Rock Hudson, about whose sexual orientation little was then known.

Her most exotic suitor was the 9th Earl of Lanesborough, who fell in love with her voice when he heard it in the bath on the radio show In Town Tonight. He immediately arranged to throw an all-night party and grand ball in her honour at his stately home.

But if he had entertained any more romantic thoughts, he was soon disappointed. She already had a boyfriend, she told him, at La Scala, Milan, and he was extremely jealous.

Yvonne De Carlo played along with the hype and publicity, portraying herself as a tigress who loathed men so much that she spurned nearly all of them. In fact, she claimed, insistent Romeos were among her pet hates — along with cabbage, false teeth and cold underwear.

The portrait Hollywood presented was highly inventive. Her favourite reading was said to be Shakespeare and Greek mythology; her musical tastes ran to symphonies and grand opera; and her most prized possession was the small white leather Bible her mother gave her at her confirmation. She also professed to be "mad keen on rocketry" and to have seen the film Destination Moon four times to supplement her research.

These diversions served only to obscure her real talents. Yvonne De Carlo's forte was comedy, but in a prolific screen career she had too few opportunities to prove it. All the best ones cropped up in Britain rather than Hollywood.

She could see the funny side of herself and was more than ready to mock her own screen image. She first got the chance in Hotel Sahara (1950), a moderately amusing wartime comedy set in the desert, with Peter Ustinov as the manager of a rundown hotel and De Carlo as his flirtatious fiancée, who welcomes the successive arrivals of the Allied and the Axis troops, since it means more officers to twist round her little finger.

The Captain's Paradise, also made in England in 1953, was much livelier and one of her best films. It starred Alec Guinness as a salty old sea dog with a wife in… well, at least two ports. In Gibraltar, there is cosy Celia Johnson, ever ready with rissoles and slippers; in North Africa, there is De Carlo, ever ready with champagne and the rumba. There is only one smudge on this idyllic scene: both women would prefer to swap roles, with Johnson dancing the night away while De Carlo yearns to darn socks. Very saucy for its time, the film benefited from two accomplished actresses gleefully lampooning themselves.

De Carlo's third successful comedy at this time was Happy Ever After (1954), a very Irish affair in which the tenants of David Niven's caddish squire draw lots for the privilege of assassinating him.

Sadly, De Carlo was never allowed to carry through this new-found talent in the cinema. But it blossomed later in television, on which, between 1964 and 1966, she played the shock-haired, 156-year-old Lily Munster in the popular series The Munsters, about a family of comic ghouls modelled on the more sophisticated Addams Family. Ironically, the actress known initially for her voluptuous charms eventually became associated in the public mind with a fearsome parody of pulchritude.

Yvonne De Carlo was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver on September 1 1922. Educated at King Edward's High School, she trained at June Roper's school of dancing and then gained acting experience at the Vancouver Little Theatre. In 1937 she travelled south to Los Angeles to continue training at the Franchen and Marco school and from 1941 began gaining employment as a dancer at local theatres and night clubs. Her first engagement was at the Florentine Gardens, then a popular watering hole in Hollywood.

Paramount talent scouts put her under contract, but little came of it. She appeared in a score of pictures between Harvard Here I Come (1942) and Bring on the Girls (1945), but they were all bit parts. These included some well-remembered films, such as This Gun for Hire and Road to Morocco in 1942, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Kismet (1944). But De Carlo's contributions passed mostly unremarked.

When her contract was not renewed she decided to freelance, and the breakthrough came almost immediately.

The producer Walter Wanger was seeking a girl who looked like Hedy Lamarr, could act like Ingrid Bergman and dance like Vera Zorina. She was to play in the 1945 production Salome, Where She Danced, a historical spy story in which an exotic dancer turns into a Mata Hari figure. De Carlo tested for it, and landed the part. She recalled 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." Critically the film was dismissed — as were nearly all her subsequent films — but it proved the springboard to a long career in Hollywood.

She appeared in very few memorable pictures, among which were the prison breakout film Brute Force (1947), in which she had only a small role, and Criss Cross (1949), a powerful film noir directed by Robert Siodmak. Much of her work in the late 1940s and early 1950s consisted of desert sagas such as Song of Scheherazade (1947); Slave Girl (1947); Casbah (a 1948 remake of the French film Pépé le Moko); The Desert Hawk (1950); and Fort Algiers (1953). There were also Westerns such as Calamity Jane and Sam Bass and The Gal Who Took the West (both 1949), Tomahawk (1951) and Border River (1954).

In Cecil B DeMille's Ten Commandments (1956) she was cast as Moses's wife, and in a 1959 Italian production, La Spada e la Croce, she played Mary Magdalene. Other historical roles included Lola Montez in Black Bart (1948) and Wagner's great love in Magic Fire (1956).

In her prime she acted opposite stars of the calibre of Clark Gable in Band of Angels (1957) and John Wayne in McLintock! (1963), but in later years, especially after her stint in The Munsters, she was increasingly cast in horror films with such lurid titles as Blazing Stewardesses (1976); Guyana, Cult of the Damned (1980); and American Gothic (1988). Her last role was a cameo in Oscar (1991).

On Broadway, she appeared in Destry Rides Again, Enter Laughing (with Alan Arkin) and toured with revivals of Pal Joey; Hello, Dolly; and No, No Nanette. Her greatest success was as Carlotta Campion in Stephen Sondheim's Follies, a part written for her, along with the show's best-known song, I'm Still Here. She also found time in 1987 to write an autobiography, called simply Yvonne.

She married, in 1955, the stuntman Robert Morgan, who was severely injured during the production of How the West Was Won in 1962. They had two sons (one of whom predeceased her), but the marriage was dissolved.

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