Yvonne De Carlo

Well, another thread about "Follies." Just what we needed.

Tony Curtis to Walter Matthau....'I fucked Yvonne De Carlo!'

Lily Munster

I hate Tony Curtis.

whore

A very talented woman--her most famous film was a campy put-on called "Salome, Where She Danced" that is very hard to find, but she's got a classic film noir performance in the more readily available "Criss-Cross" (which is actually where she met Tony Curtis--his first part was in this movie).

She had an incredible beauty but she was hard to cast. I always liked that she got a chance to redeem herself with Lily Munster (it's a classic sitcom performance--Lily is very funny, but she's the most down-to-earth of all the adult Munsters), and then again further with the role of Carlota Campion in "Follies," which was perfect for her talents.

A real hard right wing Republican who despised liberals.

She fucked Burt Lancaster, in her back yard, lying on her fur coat, without any protection. Bitch got some primo dick in her day!

So did many gays.

It amazes me that after all the B film dreck she made, De Mille cast her as Moses' wife in his epic Ten Commandments. Was Dorothy Lamour unavailable?

....

What was I Was a Male Yvonne De Carlo all about?

She was really great when they gave her the right role. As others have said, she was the ideal Carlotta in Follies because she'd lived some version of the lyrics of her big song. She was a strong musical performer and ended up doing productions of Hello, Dolly and Gypsy in regional theaters and summer stock.

she got lotsa great dick, but alas, was a cunty repukelican

De Carlo was ok, but not someone with great range. She was a contract player at Universal, which meant her prime was spent mostly in B-pictures from a subpar studio. Her husband (a stuntman) was injured a few years before The Musters and she regretted some of the jobs she took in those days, but they needed the money. She probably regretted some later choices, too. In the years after Follies, she was reduced to doing what amounted to being softcore porn with the equally over the hill John Ireland (the younger, prettier things showed the skin). She had a good singing voice but lacked a distinctive, star making sound. And she fucked just about everyone---her autobio puts it a bit more demurely.---she dated everyone, but never more than once.

Your friend was quoting none other than Yvonne De Carlo herself

^ I'd forgotten how patronising the interviewer was

Loved her in "Criss Cross;" I almost wore out my VHS cassette of it. True fans of Yvonne delight in her performance in 1979's "Nocturna," the disco vampire epic featuring songs by DL fave Gloria Gaynor and the late, great Vicki Sue Robinson. Best viewed high, stoned or drunk - and make sure your platform shoes are on tight!

Reprising her finest moment at the dedication of the restored Hollywood sign in 1978.

We squeezed Cyd Charisse out into a total of 600 posts.

I don't think this De Carlo woman is sufficiently interesting to make more than 150 posts.

Can we talk about Veronica Lake here? We were just getting going over at Cyd's thread.

R21 Sure please talk about anything.

No one's mentioned The Captain's Paradise, that she made with Alec Guinness and Celia Johnson - where the captain has two women, one in each port he sails to.

I really liked her in Criss Cross and wish she had made more noirs. There's something about the way she says to Burt Lancaster, "They're killers. Killers!" (about her husband's gang) that's very chilling.

Who's the guy who played Dracula, in the 70s or 80s? He had something to say about her in his autobiography. He sort of hinted at sex.

Speaking of film noir I don't agree Lana was bad in The Postman Always Rings Twice (continued from the other thread - about Cyd Charisse. lol) The most iconic femme fatale performances in noir include Yvonne in Criss Cross, Ava Gardner in The Killers, Jane Greer in Out Of The Past, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Jean Simmons in Angel Face, and Lana in Postman. She was particularly good because she was very sympathetic, I don't even know if she was a femme fatale in the usual sense. And whether she could act or not she looked like a woman a guy would kill her husband to get.

I loved her detour into campy horror movies like Silent Scream, Mirror Mirror, and American Gothic. She was great in those, especially American Gothic where she got to chew scenery with Rod Steiger. That's a pretty great movie that goes beyond a simple, cheesy B-movie. It's both funny and incredibly unnerving.

Veronica Lake's stardom and popularity was truly sensational, if brief.

There's a gag in the great Billy Wider/Ginger Rogers 1942 comedy The Major and the Minor where all these teenaged debutantes show up at a cadet dance with the same identical Veronica Lake peek-a-boo hairdo. Now, I know the film was produced by Lake's own studio Paramount, but nevertheless, how many other female film stars had a unique look that was blatantly (and belovedly) satirized like that in their own time?

If you ever come across it, don't miss a wonderful Veronica Lake film, Paramount's So Proudly We Hail (1943) about WWII naval nurses in the war torn Philippines.

Claudette Colbert plays the the noble and wise commanding officer, Paulette Goddard is the wisecracking good-time gal (Oscar nom for Best Actress) and Veronica is the troubled psycho. They're ably supported by the hunky, if forgotten, Sonny Tufts, a Paramount beefcake pinup whose career never got very far.

With that roster, I hope Edith Head did not design the costumes.

[quote] They're ably supported by the hunky, if forgotten, Sonny Tufts, a Paramount beefcake pinup whose career never got very far.

Forgotten? I STILL have my autographed picture of Sonny Tufts!

Oh God, Sonny "Wartime Manpower Shortage" Tufts!

Yeah, he was tall and built, but he couldn't act and he couldn't talk without whining. I just caught him in the Rifftrax "Cat Women on the Moon" from 1953, where he was playing a supporting role, the 4th most important character or so in a cast of about 6.

Yvonne was still doing fine in 1953, in fact, she made "The Captain's Paradise" with Alec Guiness, a nice sly little comedy about a bigamistic ship's captain. She plays the hot wife, of course.

Sonny Tufts was from a wealthy Boston area family (same ones that founded Tufts University) and he probably didn't need to work. He was an alcoholic and it ruined his career. I thought it was funny how he played "Kansas" in So Proudly We Hail, even though he had that strong Boston accent.

Wonder why her son died at age 40?

[quote]Claudette Colbert plays the the noble and wise commanding officer, Paulette Goddard is the wisecracking good-time gal (Oscar nom for Best Actress) and Veronica is the troubled psycho.

Which one was the dyke?

[quote]Which one was the dyke?

In real life? Claudette.

Which one was the dyke?

Mary Treen. Look her up.....you'll recognize her!

I was actually going to talk about The Captain's Paradise, R22. Yvonne was great in that. The film was later turned into the musical Oh, Captain! which starred Tony Randall in the Alec Guinness role, and Abbe Lane in Yvonne DeCarlo's role. I suppose she was considered too old for the role by the time the musical was made -She would have sung the hell out of those songs.

Poor Abbe wasn't allowed to do the original cast album (contract with another label) so her role was performed by Eileen Rodgers. You can hear how it would have sounded with DeCarlo in the role.

I had a friend who was in the business from the 1940s on, with work in the better and the lower studios, and he said the same thing as OP quoted:

Yvonne WAS.... popular and "experienced."

I loved Yvonne. She was a great talent.

Some years back, I almost scored this at a swap meet. Someone got to it right before I did.

Yvonne De Carlo slept with everybody.

Ironically she is best known as Lily Munster where she was difficult and unliked on that set.

Fortunately for everyone The Munsters' didn't last long.

Her big Follies number became cringe worthy as she aged.

Any love for Miss De Carlo's films "Band of Angels," or "The Seven Minutes"?

I always thought she was the poor man's Ava Gardner.

Sorry to hear she wasn't well-liked on "The Munsters" set.

Would've loved to have seen her on stage, I'll bet her 'Dolly' was interesting.

I wonder who some of the other "notches on her bedpost" were?

One was Ted Chapin who wrote a book about his Follies experiences.

[quote] Sonny Tufts, a Paramount beefcake pinup

He was forbidden to expose his navel.

Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster) on Yvonne's life

Yvonne used to pick up hot guys in her convertible in the parking lot of Jack's at the Beach in Santa Monica. That's where she hooked up with Robert Wagner and Tony Curtis.

"These puttanas!"

Her father must be of some mixed race. Maybe Indian or "Indian".

Yvonne's maternal grandfather was Sicilian. Her estranged father was from New Zealand.

Yes, R46, and her fake surname was stolen from a packet of sugary biscuits.

The Munsters must have been an incredibly difficult and complicated experience for Yvonne. Creating the grotesque look for Lily, the clothes and especially the makeup and hair, must have been traumatic for a middle aged beauty whose entire previous career was based on her gorgeous sexy looks. Yet needing the show to be a success which would bring her back in the public eye and probably make her very rich if successful. But then the realization that after all she'd accomplished in Hollywood films, this would be the role for which she might be most remembered.....very complicated!

I was just a kid when The Munsters premiered but I remember there was far more excitement initially about The Addams Family, which coincidentally began in the same season. But IIRC The Munsters was deemed the far cleverer show. I'm not sure ultimately which one lasted longer or is better regarded now.

Good for Yvonne though that she went on to appear on Broadway looking beautiful in Follies and introduce one of Stephen Sondheim's most famous songs I'm Still Here, which might have just done a little to dispel the image of Lily Munster.

My favorite scene in SO PROUDLY WE HAIL is the one that has nutty Veronica Lake stuffing a live grenade in her bra and taking out a Japanese machine gun nest......

[quote]I was just a kid when The Munsters premiered but I remember there was far more excitement initially about The Addams Family, which coincidentally began in the same season. But IIRC The Munsters was deemed the far cleverer show. I'm not sure ultimately which one lasted longer or is better regarded now.

Both shows premiered in fall 1964 and both ran only two seasons.

It was Frank Langella I think who said in his tell-all bio that seems a little bogus, who hinted he slept with er on some film.

*her

Didn't Langella say something about her singing "I'm Still Here" as she blew him or something or was that some fever dream I had?

She was going to play Phyllis in Follies before Alexis went to singing lessons. Her agent reportedly begged Sondheim to write a song for her as a consolation prize for losing the lead.

I never heard she was hated on the set of the Munsters. more on that.

R53 Been a log time since I read it. That would be a neat trick though.

Nothing to it, r55.

[quote] Claudette Colbert plays the the noble and wise commanding officer, Paulette Goddard is the wisecracking good-time gal (Oscar nom for Best Actress) and Veronica is the troubled psycho.

Colbert and Goddard detested each other while shooting SO PROUDLY WE HAIL for some reason.

Goddard was asked which of her two costars she got along with better and said, “Veronica, I think. After all, we are closer in age.”

I found a souvenir book for a summer stock tour production of Destry with her and Tom Poston. She signed it in green ink saying something to the effect of "...sorry you couldn't see our show". I thought of the woman who got it signed, bringing it to her friend. "Here, I got Miss DeCarlo to sign this for you!"

I don't think this was mentioned yet, but her husband, a stuntman, was horribly injured working on "How the West was Won," and it seems that she took the Munsters role to pay his medical expenses.

R58 She actually auditioned for the Broadway version of Destry but didn't get it (Dolores Gray did).

Wasn't Jane Russell also married to a Hollywood stuntman who was in some horrific accident?

Was he smothered by her boobs??

His leg was crushed by the train in the last part of How The West Was Won.

R61 No. She was married to quarterback Bob Waterfield, then later to an actor who had a heart attack and died shortly after they were married, and to another guy who wasn't a stuntman either.

I was never married to a stuntman either, but I was in HOW THE WEST WAS WON.

[quote] Who was she? Talking to an old gay friend recently, about old movies, I asked him about Yvonne De Carlo. "Slut!" he said.

Was that a comment directed at you, or about Yvonne de Carlo?

[quote] R64 I was never married to a stuntman either, but I was in HOW THE WEST WAS WON. —Carroll Baker

I was just a girl, trying to make my tits look bigger the best way I knew how. But Debbie’s stole my thunder.

R65 Hm, I never thought of that. Maybe he was talking about me! He thinks I'm a slut! I'm so proud. It wasn't even about Yvonne De Carlo.

Never mind.

Carroll Baker. Now there was a dull actress.

R68 Gee I thought she was a very good actress.

Baker was on the first season of the original Roswell and she was just terrible.

Baker always had a very weak and reedy speaking voice.

R70 I think you're being hard on her. Maybe you should see her in something other than one episode of a crappy old TV series. She was famous for Baby Doll, Giant, Bridge To The Sun, The Big Country, Cheyenne Autumn.

She seems awful in most of those clips in Butch Patrick's tribute---her Salome is just ludicrous, almost Norma Desmond-like. I remember her looking like an old hag in Satan's Cheerleaders, but he really seemed a bit fat and frau-ish in "Follies".

R72, I've seen her before and I used that as an example of the last time I saw her and nothing changed. Same wooden delivery, poor speaking voice and startling lack of presence.

R73: She = De Carlo, rather than the pride of Johnstown, PA

Yvonne was B-level movie career-wise, r73. Luckily she got a couple of gigs after it had run its course that kept her in popular culture. Your Miss Virginia Mayo wasn't so lucky.

Alexis, you big dyke, never starred in a Cecil B. De Mille Oscar-winning epic.

All you need to see is the name "Virginia Mayo" to know that something was a B-movie "programmer"

DeCarlo claimed to have had a 3 year affair with Howard Hughes before he was crazy. Unfortunately, he wouldn't marry her, which was what she said she wanted. My guess is that was batshit crazy even then and she figures that if she couldn't get his money, she could be fucking Burt Lancaster.

The Munsters was created by the guys behind "Leave it to Beaver". They saw it as a parody of "The Donna Reed Show"--the first season opening was a parody of Reed's opening sequence. The jokes were pretty obvious and broad, esp. that first year. The Addams family had a fancier pedigree (New Yorker cartoons) and mixed sitcom schtick with themes that were more inventive than the Musters and frankly had a better cast, but the writing went down hill the second year.

Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis and yes, Yvonne de Carlo were brilliant on The Munsters. Nobody on The Addams Family delivered like them.

r77 - Yvonne darling, don't make me smack you on the head with my Tony.

[quote]All you need to see is the name "Virginia Mayo" to know that something was a B-movie "programmer"

R78 Either you're trying to provoke people, or you don't know shit. She was in The Best Years Of Our Lives. Several big Danny Kaye epics. Colorado Territory and a few other A westerns. Captain Horatio Hornblower with Gregory Peck. Starred with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Alan Ladd. Even the crappier pictures she made weren't Bs.

Virginia and FOLLIES...

[quote] you don't know shit....

R81 Well, you're here to tell us about it.

[quote] She was in The Best Years Of Our Lives.

She was the odd one out in that upper-middle class film because she was required to play a slattern that the hero (Dana Andrews) chose to reject.

[quote] Captain Horatio Hornblower with Gregory Peck.

Gregory Peck's choice for the part was the tall and stately actress Margaret Leighton (see below), who shone in that film called 'The Winslow Boy'. Serious film journals can vouch that Peck wanted her but the American moneymen said Margaret Leighton may have intelligence and refinement but her breasts were too small for Americans.

And the American woman you mention was nothing if not busty.

R81: You must be one of the people who wrote her wiki. Being cast in good films isn't the same thing as being good or even memorable in them. Goldwyn used her as an accessory, not because she was a great actress and no one remembers her from White Heat, which was probably the best of her Warner films. Part of the problem with being a Warner contract player was that she was there during the studio's financial decline in the 50s, which was reversed by Warner going into tv and using their tv players in films---you got camp classics like "A Summer Place" not odd classics like "White Heat". She might have been better off trying to build a bigger tv career. OTOH, even though she did all the "not dead yet" shows, she's pretty forgettable from those, as well.

I like Carroll Baker - the thinking man's sex symbol.

[quote]She was the odd one out in that upper-middle class film because she was required to play a slattern that the hero (Dana Andrews) chose to reject.

What the hell is this even supposed to mean?

R83 Nothing you say proves she was a B picture actress. Who cares who Gregory Peck wanted for the part? That doesn't change the fact Mayo was in the film.

She was in The Best Years Of Our Lives because it was a Sam Goldwyn production, she was under contract to him, and Goldwyn didn't make B pictures. Bette Davis said she thought Mayo should have gotten a supporting actress Oscar nomination for the performance.

R84 Not only didn't I write her Wikipedia entry, I never even read it. I also have no idea how to do a Wikipedia entry. Again, the question is not whether she was memorable, brilliant, whatever. It's whether she was a B picture actress - that's what I was answering. She was definitely an A list actress for at least 10 or 12 years. It's irrelevant whether she was 'memorable" or whatever else you clowns are trying to push.

hey, hold the Mayo!

I never miss a Virginia Mayo musical, r82.

Please ..........................this thread is about a different B movie queen and one with a much more interesting personal life and even worse credits than Virginia Mayo.

[quote] What the hell ?. . .

R86 Have you watched 'The Best Years of Our Lives'?

Captain Fred Derry (played by Dana Andrews) faces a crisis as he returns from the war.

He is anxious to learn the whereabouts of his short-term blonde bride (played by Mayo). He realises his new mother-in-law is slovenly and blowsy and is told that his floozy wife is fornicating with other men.

She's Working Her Way Through College!

She got top billing above the President!

Sorry, we're just not that into Miss Mayo.

The OP's video is ludicrous.

A skinny Canadian trying to be exotic by smearing herself in brown paint.

Oh no, the SJWs have arrived

Please note that Virginia Mayo gets top billing over future Greatest President Ever Ronny Reagan in the poster at R92.

r96 Did you actually READ r92?

[quote]She got top billing above the President!

Because...

Dorothy Collins scolded Yvonne about preying upon intern Ted Chapin during the Boston previews of FOLLIES.

I can imagine when discussing her career, she called her big movie: "Salami, Where She Danced.

[quote]Ironically she is best known as Lily Munster where she was difficult and unliked on that set.

I only knew her as Lily Munster before this thread.

Frankie & Johnny

I hadn't heard much about her on the set of the Munsters, but then the comments in her interview with Vickie Lawrence suggested that she did try to have some kind of relationship with her cast mates after the show was over, Yet, Butch Patrick made it sound like he never saw her and her crack about Al Lewis as a Jew who owned an Italian restaurant made it sound like she wasn't friendly at all. Gwynne and Lewis had become unlikely friends on "Car 54 Where Are You" and I would guess they weren't going to tolerate diva-like behavior.

All this talk of her "diva behavior" on The Munsters and yet not a shred of evidence. I don't believe it.

There was no talk of this when she did Follies, where the gossip could never have been quelled had it existed. Yvonne and Dorothy Collins actually became close friends. I'm a friend of Dorothy's daughter on Facebook and she often talks fondly of Yvonne.

Frank Langella wrote in that really kinda awesome memoir that Yvonne sucked him off twice and swallowed. Not gentlemanly to tell of course, but she should be able to enjoy sex on her own terms too, so no shaming.