Yvonne De Carlo, 1922 - 2007.

Sometimes it's good to wait just a bit. On Thursday, Wolfgang Saxon reported in the New York Times: "Yvonne De Carlo, a dark-haired Hollywood beauty who advanced from the chorus line to play Moses' wife in a movie epic but who achieved her greatest popularity as Lily in the CBS television sitcom The Munsters, died on Monday in Los Angeles. She was 84."

Other films are mentioned and so on, but it isn't until a day or two later that you see entries such as Campaspe's: "The rest of the world may say, 'Oh look, Lily Munster died.' But we at Cinemarati immediately thought of the late Yvonne De Carlo's twisty turn in Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross.... The more famous Siodmak noir is The Killers, also with Burt Lancaster. And that film's femme fatale, Ava Gardner, went on to a much more A-list career. But in Criss Cross, De Carlo gives the better performance in a more difficult part."

Updated through 1/16.

More from Jennifer DeFilippo at Cinematical and Ronald Bergan in the Guardian: "[S]he mainly alternated between slinky femme fatales, such as Lola Montez in Black Bart (1948) or Sheherazade in The Desert Hawk (1950), and gun-toting or sword-flashing gals in Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949) and Buccaneer's Girl (1950). Through the 1950s she continued to shine as saloon girls and cabaret singers in movies that were mostly the purest hokum."

"Yvonne De Carlo's forte was comedy, but in a prolific screen career she had too few opportunities to prove it. All the best ones cropped up in Britain rather than Hollywood." The Telegraph spotlights the British comedies Hotel Sahara, The Captain's Paradise and Happy Ever After.

Somewhat related: Mick LaSalle draws some fun distinctions: "Addams Family people tend to be left-of-center, culturally elitist, college educated, somewhat counter-culture and strident in their opinions. Munsters people tend to be forthright, honest, ingenuous, engaging and open to other opinions. They also tend to have had happier childhoods."

Update, 1/16: Bill Gibron at PopMatters: "She's a reminder that imagery and memory are a strong combination, a recipe to reduce even the most startling female figure into a lifetime of living as the bride of the monster."

Posted by dwhudson at January 13, 2007 1:58 PM