Yvonne De Carlo, Lily of 'Munsters,' dies at 84
LOS ANGELES - Yvonne De Carlo, the beautiful star who played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" but achieved her greatest popularity on TV's "The Munsters," died Monday. She was 84.
LOS ANGELES - Yvonne De Carlo, the beautiful star who played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" but achieved her greatest popularity on TV's "The Munsters," died Monday. She was 84.
De Carlo died at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Los Angeles, longtime friend and television producer Kevin Burns said yesterday.
De Carlo, whose shapely figure helped launch her career in the 1940s 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 1964-1966 slapstick horror-movie spoof "The Munsters."
Although 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 able to sustain a long career by repeatedly reinventing herself. A longtime student of voice, she sang opera at the Hollywood Bowl. When movie roles became scarce, she ventured into stage musicals.
Her greatest stage triumph came on Broadway in 1971 with "Follies," which won the 1972 Tony award for best original musical score. She belted out Sondheim's showstopping number "I'm Still Here."
The Canadian-born De Carlo began her career with a parade of bit parts in films of the early 1940s. In 1956, she veered from her former image when Cecil B. DeMille chose her to play Sephora, wife to Charlton Heston's Moses in "The Ten Commandments." *