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Yvonne De Carlo
Margaret Yvonne Middleton (September 1, 1922 – January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Hollywood film star and sex symbol in the 1940s and 1950s, made several musical recordings, and later acted on television and stage.
De Carlo was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was enrolled in a local dance school by her mother when she was three. By the early 1940s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo entered beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs. In 1942, she signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures, where she got uncredited bit parts in important films. Her first lead was for producer E.B. Derr in the 1943 James Fenimore Cooper adventure Deerslayer.
She obtained her breakthrough role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945), a Universal Pictures release produced by Walter Wanger, who described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." The film's publicity and success turned her into a star, and she signed a five-year contract with Universal. Universal starred her in its lavish Technicolor productions, such as Frontier Gal (1945), Song of Scheherazade (1947), and Slave Girl (1947). Cameramen voted her "Queen of Technicolor" three years in a row. Tired of being typecast as exotic women, she made her first serious dramatic performances in two film noirs, Brute Force (1947) and Criss Cross (1949).
The first Canadian film star to visit Israel, De Carlo received further recognition as an actress for her leading performances in the British comedies Hotel Sahara (1951), The Captain's Paradise (1953), and Happy Ever After (1954). Her career reached its peak when eminent producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Moses' Midianite wife, Sephora, in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). For this role, she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Supporting Actress. Her success continued with other notable starring roles in Flame of the Islands (1956), Death of a Scoundrel (1956), Raw Edge (1956), Band of Angels (1957), and The Sword and the Cross (1958), in which she portrayed Mary Magdalene.
She starred in the CBS sitcom The Munsters (1964–1966), playing Herman Munster's glamorous ghoulish wife, Lily, a role she reprised in the feature film Munster, Go Home! (1966) and the TV film The Munsters' Revenge (1981). In 1971, she played Carlotta Campion and introduced the popular song "I'm Still Here" in the Broadway production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. Yvonne, her best-selling autobiography, was published in 1987. A stroke survivor, De Carlo died of heart failure in 2007. She was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures and television.
On the evening of August 31 that year [1922], three days after her own birthday, Marie was having five-minute contractions. She was taken to the public ward of St. Paul's Hospital, where she went through a difficult labor. I was born the following morning amid the tumult of the season's worst thunderstorm. Marie's doctor hadn't arrived, and the delivery was made by a pair of floor nurses. They confirmed afterward that as she was being shifted to the delivery table, she was shouting, "I want a girl. It must be a girl. I want a dancer!"
De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922, at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her nickname was "Peggy" because she was named after the silent film star Baby Peggy. Her mother, Marie De Carlo, was born in France to a Sicilian father and a Scottish mother. Marie, a "wayward and rebellious" teenager, aspired to become a dancer and worked as a milliner's apprentice until she met Peggy's father, William Shelto Middleton. Middleton was a salesman born in New Zealand to English parents and had "piercing eyes of pale blue, and a wealth of straight black hair."
Marie and William married in Alberta, where they lived for a couple of months before returning to Vancouver. They moved in with Marie's parents, but the marriage was troubled. Peggy had only two memories of her father: climbing up to his knee and crawling toward his feet. By the time Peggy was three, William was involved in various swindles and fled Canada aboard a schooner, promising to send for his wife and child. Marie and Peggy never heard from him again; rumors said that he remarried twice and had more children, worked as an actor in silent films, or died aboard a ship. Peggy later wrote, "My own assumption is that he died before he had the chance to discover that his Baby Peggy had become a Hollywood actress, or I think he would have tried to contact me." After William's departure, Marie left her parents' home and found work in a shop.
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Yvonne De Carlo
Margaret Yvonne Middleton (September 1, 1922 – January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Hollywood film star and sex symbol in the 1940s and 1950s, made several musical recordings, and later acted on television and stage.
De Carlo was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was enrolled in a local dance school by her mother when she was three. By the early 1940s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo entered beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs. In 1942, she signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures, where she got uncredited bit parts in important films. Her first lead was for producer E.B. Derr in the 1943 James Fenimore Cooper adventure Deerslayer.
She obtained her breakthrough role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945), a Universal Pictures release produced by Walter Wanger, who described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." The film's publicity and success turned her into a star, and she signed a five-year contract with Universal. Universal starred her in its lavish Technicolor productions, such as Frontier Gal (1945), Song of Scheherazade (1947), and Slave Girl (1947). Cameramen voted her "Queen of Technicolor" three years in a row. Tired of being typecast as exotic women, she made her first serious dramatic performances in two film noirs, Brute Force (1947) and Criss Cross (1949).
The first Canadian film star to visit Israel, De Carlo received further recognition as an actress for her leading performances in the British comedies Hotel Sahara (1951), The Captain's Paradise (1953), and Happy Ever After (1954). Her career reached its peak when eminent producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Moses' Midianite wife, Sephora, in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). For this role, she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Supporting Actress. Her success continued with other notable starring roles in Flame of the Islands (1956), Death of a Scoundrel (1956), Raw Edge (1956), Band of Angels (1957), and The Sword and the Cross (1958), in which she portrayed Mary Magdalene.
She starred in the CBS sitcom The Munsters (1964–1966), playing Herman Munster's glamorous ghoulish wife, Lily, a role she reprised in the feature film Munster, Go Home! (1966) and the TV film The Munsters' Revenge (1981). In 1971, she played Carlotta Campion and introduced the popular song "I'm Still Here" in the Broadway production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. Yvonne, her best-selling autobiography, was published in 1987. A stroke survivor, De Carlo died of heart failure in 2007. She was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures and television.
On the evening of August 31 that year [1922], three days after her own birthday, Marie was having five-minute contractions. She was taken to the public ward of St. Paul's Hospital, where she went through a difficult labor. I was born the following morning amid the tumult of the season's worst thunderstorm. Marie's doctor hadn't arrived, and the delivery was made by a pair of floor nurses. They confirmed afterward that as she was being shifted to the delivery table, she was shouting, "I want a girl. It must be a girl. I want a dancer!"
De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922, at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her nickname was "Peggy" because she was named after the silent film star Baby Peggy. Her mother, Marie De Carlo, was born in France to a Sicilian father and a Scottish mother. Marie, a "wayward and rebellious" teenager, aspired to become a dancer and worked as a milliner's apprentice until she met Peggy's father, William Shelto Middleton. Middleton was a salesman born in New Zealand to English parents and had "piercing eyes of pale blue, and a wealth of straight black hair."
Marie and William married in Alberta, where they lived for a couple of months before returning to Vancouver. They moved in with Marie's parents, but the marriage was troubled. Peggy had only two memories of her father: climbing up to his knee and crawling toward his feet. By the time Peggy was three, William was involved in various swindles and fled Canada aboard a schooner, promising to send for his wife and child. Marie and Peggy never heard from him again; rumors said that he remarried twice and had more children, worked as an actor in silent films, or died aboard a ship. Peggy later wrote, "My own assumption is that he died before he had the chance to discover that his Baby Peggy had become a Hollywood actress, or I think he would have tried to contact me." After William's departure, Marie left her parents' home and found work in a shop.