This Day in History - 2 August 2013

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: AUGUST 2, 1939

Vancouver-born actress Yvonne De Carlo is
shown circa the late 1940s, early ^'50s.
Hyped as `the most beautiful girl in the world,' 
she was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols.

Yvonne De Carlo, born Peggy Middleton, 

works on the set of the 1952 movie 

Scarlet Angel. De Carlo died in 2007.

          

            Seventy-four years ago, Vancouver Sun writer Alan Morley devoted his "Screenings and Reel Dust" column to a local girl trying to break into the enter­tainment biz — Yvonne De Carlo.

            "Yvonne is a Vancouver-born girl,''wrote Morley. "She is 18, dark, possesses a tempestuous brunette beauty and a good figure, and to date her nearest approach to starring has been a week's engagement opposite a boxing kangaroo.

            "The kangaroo, says Yvonne, was a nice chap to work with, and — barring one attempt to chew off her lovely dark hair — a perfect gentleman."

            Her gig with the boxing kanga­roo was at the Beacon theatre on Hastings. The kangaroo's owner, Lindsay Fabro, came to town for a weeklong engage­ment, and needed a "good-looking girl to play opposite his educated Australian bopper."He selected De Carlo, who had pre­viously been among the chorus girls at the Palomar Ballroom.

            Morley said that De Carlo's parents were "old-time French circus people" who had taken her to Hollywood when she was 13. A couple of years later, she had come back to Vancouver, where she lived with her aunt in the West End and attended King Edward high school.

            What Morley didn't know was that most people in Vancouver knew her as Peggy Middleton — Yvonne was her middle name, De Carlo was her mother's maiden name. Her dad left the family when she was three, and her mother scraped by, constantly moving with her daughter. Mom had dreamed of being a dancer, and had high hopes for her beau­tiful young daughter, who stud­ied with local teacher June Roper.

            Mom took Yvonne to Hollywood a couple of times before finally settling there for good in 1941. She soon signed a contract with Paramount and paid her dues with bit parts in 23 movies before landing a starring role in Salome, Where She Danced.

            Her exotic beauty and volup­tuous figure led a Hollywood studio to hype her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." She went on to become one of Hollywood's leading sex sym­bols, dating Howard Hughes, Ali Khan (Rita Hayworth's ex), and the Shah of Iran's brother.

            Today, she is mostly remem­bered as Lily Munster in the 1960s TV show The Munsters. But in the 1950s, she was an A-list movie star who appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's production of The Ten Commandments opposite Charlton Heston. She died in 2007 at the age of 84.

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun