Yvonne De Carlo, best known to fans of classic television as Lily Munster, died Monday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Fund complex in Woodland Hills, California. She was 84 at the time of her death.
De Carlo played Lily Munster for two seasons of the prime time “The Munsters” from 1964 to 1966. She also played Lily in the 1966 movie “Munster, Go Home” and an early 1980s television reunion movie, “The Munsters’ Revenge”.
De Carlo was born on September 1, 1922, in British Columbia, Canada. Her given name was Margaret (some cite it as Peggy) Yvonne Middleton. She began performing as a young teenager and early on adopted the stage name Yvonne De Carlo.
De Carlo began acting in films in the early 1940s including a hit that launched a B-star film career, “Salome, Where She Danced”.
Perhaps De Carlo’s best known role outside of Lily Munster was as Sephora, wife of Moses, played by Charlton Heston, in 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments.
De Carlo was 42 when she began playing Lily Munster. De Carlo’s co-stars on “The Munsters” included the late Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster, a bumbling Frankenstein; Al Lewis as Grandpa Munster; Butch Patrick as Eddie Munster; and both Beverly Owen and Pat Priest as Marilyn Munster. Gwynne died in 1993 at age 66. Lewis died last year at age 82.
The Munsters” premiered on CBS only a short time after “The Addams Family” had its premiere on ABC. Both shows aired for two seasons but live on in the perpetuity of syndication.
After “The Munsters”, De Carlo played Broadway as part of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies”. The show won more than a half-dozen Tony Awards although De Carlo herself never received a nomination.
In one of her last roles, she had a cameo appearance in the 1995 remake “Here Comes the Munsters” with an all-new cast playing the parts of the original Munster characters.
De Carlo’s many film appearances include: “Frontier Gal” (1945), “Song of Scheherazade” (1947), “Brute Force” (1947) (alongside Burt Lancaster), “Criss Cross” (1949), “The Desert Hawk” (1950), “Happily Ever After” (1954), “Band of Angels” (1957), “The Power” (1968), and “The Seven Minutes” (1971). De Carlo also appeared on television programs such as “Bonanza”, “Burke’s Law”, “The Virginian”, “Fantasy Island”, “Murder She Wrote”, “Dream On”, and “Tales from the Crypt. She played the wife of a slave owner in 1977 television mini-series “Roots”.
