Contents
* 1 Biography
* 2 Film career
* 3 Character actress
* 4 Television series
o 4.1 The Munsters
* 5 Honour
o 5.1 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
* 6 Opera and Musical Theatre
* 7 Last appearances
* 8 Quotes
* 9 Personal life
* 10 Death
* 11 Filmography
o 11.1 Short subjects
* 12 TV work
* 13 Awards
* 14 Bibliography
* 15 References
* 16 External links
Biography
The daughter of an aspiring actress, Marie De Carlo, and a salesman, William Middleton, De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, British Columbia, and nicknamed 'Peggy.' "I was named Margaret Yvonne - Margaret because my mother was very fond of one of the derivatives of the name. She was fascinated at the time by the movie star Baby Peggy, and I suppose she wanted a Baby Peggy of her own." Her maternal grandfather, Michael de Carlo, was Sicilian-born, and her maternal grandmother, Margaret Purvis, was Scottish-born. Margaret's mother ran away from home when she was 16 to become a ballerina; after a couple of years of working as a shop girl, she was married in 1924. Little Peggy was three years old when her father abandoned the family. She lived with her grandparents. By the time she entered grade school, she found that her strong singing voice brought her the attention she longed for. Although her mother recognized Peggy's singing talent, she had already decided that her daughter would be a dancer. As a teenager Peggy was taken by her mother to Hollywood where she enrolled her in dancing school; she also attended Le Conte Middle School in Hollywood. Margaret lived in a downtown apartment with her mother, while Marie took on odd jobs such as waitressing. Mother and daughter were uprooted when their visas expired. Unable to find work, they returned to
She attended and dropped out of Vancouver's now-defunct King Edward High School, to focus more on her dance studies. She then attended the B.C. School of Dancing. It was there that Canadian dance instructor, June Roper, started her in a new direction, for which she was grateful and relieved. The following year at the Orpheum Theatre, Peggy appeared as a hula dancer in the famous revue Waikiki. A new nightclub, the Palomar, opened in Vancouver, and she acquired a week-long booking. Hoping to present more sophisticated image, she combined her middle name with her mother's maiden name and became "Yvonne De Carlo."[citation needed]
The pair made several such trips until 1940, when De Carlo was first runner-up to "Miss Venice Beach" and was hired by showman Nils Granlund as a dancer at the Florentine Gardens.[3] She had been dancing for Granlund only a short time when she was arrested by immigration officials and deported to Canada, but in January 1941, Granlund sent a telegram to Canadian immigration officials pledging his sponsorship of De Carlo in the United States, and affirmed his offer of steady employment, both requirements to reenter the country.
Before she worked at Florentine, she also got her first job at 16, working at Vancouver's Palomar, where it expanded from a ballroom to a nightclub in 1938. Her time at the nightclub ended when she allegedly was pressured to expose her breasts.[citation needed]. Seeking contract work in the movies, she abruptly quit the Florentine Gardens after less than a year, landing a role as a bathing beauty in the 1941 B-movie Harvard, Here I Come.[6] Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll, another Hollywood showman. Her sixth film appearance was at the request of Nils Granlund, and the film Rhythm Parade was set at the Florentine Gardens nightclub in Hollywood.
In December 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor signaled America's entrance into World War II. During this period she engaged in morale boosting performances for U.S. servicemen. De Carlo was a favorite leading lady in the 1940s, and a recipient of many letters from GI's.[citation needed]
She was a Paramount starlet, but the studio apparently signed her mainly for her slight resemblance to Dorothy Lamour, as it was common then for studios to sign lookalikes in order to remind the stars in question that they easily could be replaced should their behavior become difficult or their box-office appeal begin to wane. When she moved to Universal Studios, she was utilized as a B-movie version of Maria Montez, one of the studio's reigning divas.[citation needed]
Film career
Her break came in 1945 playing the title role in Salome, Where She Danced. Though not a critical success, it was a box office favorite, and De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Of the role, she was less sure, saying of her entrance, "I came through these beaded curtains, wearing a Japanese kimono and a Japanese headpiece, and then performed a Siamese dance. Nobody seemed to know quite why."[citation needed]
In 1947 she played her first leading role in Slave Girl and then in 1949 had her biggest success. As the female lead opposite Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross, she played a femme fatale, and her career began to ascend. She starred in the 1953 film The Captain's Paradise, as one of two wives a ship captain (Alec Guinness) keeps in separate ports. Cast in The Ten Commandments (1956) in a leading role as Sephora, Moses' wife (a role originally chosen for Anne Baxter), De Carlo became part of a major hit. The 1957 film Band of Angels featured her opposite Clark Gable in an American Civil War story, along with Sidney Poitier and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. The actress worked steadily for the next several years, although many of the films failed to advance her career.
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