There were a lot of talented and attractive actresses back in the day and the stunning Yvonne De Carlo was definitely one of them.
She catapulted to fame through starring in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, only for a tragic accident to suddenly halt her career.
The legendary Yvonne De Carlo was a sultry and versatile actress with a movie career spanning over six decades. Born in 1922, she’s definitely one of the most prominent celebrities to come out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
As a young girl, De Carlo was abandoned by her father. She was raised by her mother in poor circumstances – but she always knew that she wanted to be an actress, and De Carlo wrote her own plays as a 13-year-old. During her time in Hollywood, the blue-eyed brunette proved that she was the real deal – she could do it all. It wasn’t just the fact that her beauty was overwhelming, De Carlo seemed to be a very down-to-earth lady as well.
Her career in movies and television is a testimony to her strength of character and determination. Among many other things, she played Moses’ wife in the epic film The Ten Commandments – though she’s best known for her role on the tv series The Munsters.
No one could have played Lily Munster better than De Carlo – she really nailed the role of a vampire in the monster sitcom. To this day, many of us can still remember the famous line when Lily, the matriarch of the monster family, says, “I’ve never heard of anything so outrageous in all my LIVES!”
The show propelled Yvonne De Carlo towards TV stardom – the role defined her career, and she gained a whole new generation of fans. It could even be said that The Munsters actually renewed De Carlos’s career. She had a good run in Tinseltown even before the show – she was often called the most beautiful girl in the world, and the audience loved her.
But the truth is that De Carlo’s star quality had begun to fade around the time she was cast in the monster sitcom. The Canadian-American actress had turned 42 when she was offered the role of Lily. And no one could have guessed that The Munsters would be hailed as one of the best television series of all time.
“It meant security,” De Carlo later said. “It gave me a new, young audience I wouldn’t have had otherwise. It made me ‘hot’ again, which I wasn’t for a while.”
“But I never estimated it would become this cult thing. It took two hours of makeup to make me seem like that. It ran for two huge seasons, then CBS quarreled with the creators about reruns as we got canceled. A movie in color in 1966 [‘Munster, Go Home!’] showed off everything in reds and greens on my face. Boy, was I ugly.”
After The Munsters, De Carlo continued to appear both in TV series and on stage. As one of the most respected actresses in the business, she had fans in every generation and no problem finding new and exciting projects.
Unfortunately, De Carlo had a pretty tough time of things during the last years of her life. It all goes back to when the actress met stuntman Robert ”Bob” Morgan on set in 1955.
The couple obviously had some chemistry, but Morgan was married at the time and Yvonne didn’t want to take things further. According to herself, she had ”no intention of causing that marriage to break up.”
Her husband lost his leg
When Morgan’s wife died, he and De Carlo met again on the set of The Ten Commandments in Egypt. They fell in love, got married, and had two sons together, Bruce Ross and Michael.
But living with a stuntman and daredevil came with a price. Morgan and De Carlo struggled to make their marriage work, but everything changed when the former was hit by a moving log train while shooting the 1962 movie How the West Was Won.
The accident cost Morgan his leg. He almost died performing the stunt, and the traumatic experience would affect the whole family. After the incident, medical bills piled up and De Carlo worked extremely hard to support her family. Yvonne, who had basically retired from acting by that point, had to go back to work to pay the bills.
“Before the accident, we were on the verge of breaking up, but when they took me to the hospital I just choked up and only one thought filled my mind: I don’t want my husband to die,” she said.
The Hollywood couple stayed together until 1973.
Losing her son
Sadly, De Carlo would once again have to face unimaginable tragedy. In 1997, her son Michael died at age 39. According to his brother, Michael died of brain damage from a stroke.
Her son’s death was a heavy blow for De Carlo. She made her last film in 1995, and after her son’s death never returned to the entertainment industry. She herself suffered a minor stroke in 1998.
According to her other son, Bob Ross, the stroke resulted from the stress and grief De Carlo felt over Michael’s passing.
“It just preyed on her mind to the point that she had a stroke the following year,” James Bawden, a former TV columnist for the Toronto Star, said.
“All she would talk about was her son.”
Yvonne De Carlo cause of death
Yvonne De Carlo passed away in January 2007 at age 84. During the last years of her life, she lived in a semi-retirement home near Solvang, north of Santa Barbara.
Her cause of death was heart failure.
“I think she will best remembered as the definitive Lily Munster. She was the vampire mom to millions of baby boomers. In that sense, she’s iconic,” her longtime friend and television producer Kevin Burns said at the time.
“But it would be a shame if that’s the only way she is remembered. She was also one of the biggest beauty queens of the ’40s and ’50s, one of the most beautiful women in the world. This was one of the great glamour queens of Hollywood, one of the last ones.”
Yvonne De Carlo is just pure legendary! She is what acting is all about and managed to reinvent herself all the time.
No matter her role, she was always on top of her game and portrayed her character in the most elegant and believable fashion. Rest in Peace!
A month after the Tom Cruise rumors, Katie Holmes has confirmed the truth about their daughter in a rare interview.
Katie Holmes stated in an unusual interview that she want to “protect” the daughter she had with Tom Cruise.
In 2012, after six years of marriage, Holmes and Mission Impossible star Cruise called it quits. Their breakup was well reported.
After the couple’s divorce, which was the subject of many rumors, Holmes retained custody of their daughter, Suri. Holmes has been candid about how little of the now sixteen-year-old has been viewed over time.
Holmes gained notoriety at the age of 19 after landing a role in the teen drama Dawson’s Creek.
In an interview with Glamour Magazine, Holmes stated, “I remember really wanting to grow as an actor and not just do things to capitalize on the moment when we were doing Dawson’s Creek and it was successful.” “I wanted to learn from other people.”
But after she began dating Hollywood A-lister Tom Cruise, the Batman Begins actress hit new heights. The media’s attention in the couple and their family intensified with the birth of their daughter Suri.
The increased scrutiny caused new paparazzi pictures of Tom and Kate’s young daughter to surface almost daily. In response, Katie made the conscious decision to avoid the limelight so as to protect her young daughter’s morals. This resulted in a pause in career that lasted till 2011.
As was previously noted, Tom and Katie split up in 2012, five years after getting married in an Italian ceremony.
Considering that they were two of the most well-known couples on the planet, it would not come as a huge surprise that the rumors went bananas. There was a lot of speculation as to why they broke up, with Holmes being thought to be wary of the Church of Scientology.
Actually, Katie used New York to file for Tom’s divorce. This was purportedly done to improve her chances of being granted sole custody of Suri because the law forbids giving parents who are at odds with one another partial custody of their child.
Once Holmes was given sole custody of the child, she was able to ensure that Suri stayed away from Scientology. Because it was alleged that Tom did not anticipate the divorce, he was unable to control the narrative, as he was accused of doing during his break with Nicole Kidman.
In any case, Holmes’s desperate desire to protect her child doesn’t go away.
Before her most recent film, Rare Objects, debuted, the 44-year-old said:
Since my child was so noticeable when she was a little child, I truly like to protect her, which has been extremely important to me. I feel very lucky to be her mother. She is a very remarkable individual.
The fact that Tom Cruise and his daughter hardly ever interacted was just made public this month. Page Six claims that the 60-year-old Top Gun star is no longer active in Suri’s life and hasn’t seen her in years.
Which do you prefer, Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes? Do you think Katie is acting appropriately by keeping Suri secret from the press?
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