'Munsters' Star De Carlo Dies

Zap2It.com | January 10, 2007

Yvonne De Carlo

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Actress also appeared in 'Ten Commandments'

Yvonne De Carlo, who starred as the wife of Fred Gwynne's bumbling Frankenstein monster in "The Munsters," has died.

De Carlo, whose career spanned better than 50 years, died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement facility in Los Angeles. She was 84.

Although her roles included the wife of Moses in "The Ten Commandments" and she won a Tony in 1972 for her role in Stephen Sondheim's "Follies," De Carlo was best known for her role on "The Munsters," the mid-'60s sitcom in which she and Gwynne played the loving heads of a household filled with horror-movie characters, with De Carlo's Lily giving off a Vampira-esque air.

Her career began in the early 1940s with a string of small parts in Paramount films. She moved up through the studio system later in the decade, appearing in a number of westerns and desert-themed films at Universal that made use of her striking beauty.

De Carlo's most prestigious film roles came in the late 1950s, when she played Moses' (Charlton Heston) wife in "The Ten Commandments" and starred opposite Sidney Poitier and Clark Gable in "Band of Angels." Her other movie credits include "McClintock," "Munster, Go Home" -- a spinoff of the TV show -- and "American Gothic."

She also wrote an autobiography in which she detailed affairs with the likes of director Billy Wilder, actors Robert Taylor and Burt Lancaster and Howard Hughes.