We are getting closer to the end of the summer. What a summer it has been! We've had earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes ... you name it, we've had it.
I've had my own crazy summer. I've been back and forth to Florida, been in the hospital, and my son turned Sweet 16.
Oh, what a summer!
And today is the beginning of the final month of summer, and it is time to look at a famous person who was born today, who, even though she is no longer with us, was an icon for the baby boomer generation ...
... and because of TV reruns, she has never lost that iconic status.
Yvonne DeCarlo would have turned 89 today if she were still alive. She passed away in 2007, and due to her role as Lily Munster on "The Munsters," she made an indelible impression on kids of the 1960s, and I think kids in the succeeding generations, too.
The Canadian-born DeCarlo--who was half-Jewish on her mother's side--was a beauty with an hourglass figure who made her mark on the silver screen way before the Lily role came about. Howard Hughes even had his eye on her obvious assets. She starred in several B movies and several top-flight productions, including "The Ten Commandments." She had that exotic look that you don't often forget.
But like many actresses, once they reach a certain age, roles can be few and far between.
By the mid-1960s, DeCarlo was pretty much forgotten. She continued to appear in films and TV, but was something of an afterthought as a film star.
"The Munsters," created by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, was a counterpoint to their previous "Leave It To Beaver" sitcom. On Beaver, everything was in place, was pretty much perfect, and the Cleavers have continued on as our favorite TV All-American Family.
Fred and Lily Munster, as well as Grandpa, Eddie and, to a certain degree, Marilyn, were an All-American family too. But they certainly didn't look the part. Their ghoulish manner-sans Marilyn, the "ugly duckling" of the bunch--belied the fact that they wanted the same things that we all want in life, no matter how they looked.
Connelly and Mosher scored a coup when they got DeCarlo for the role of Lily. Although not their original choice, she was a former movie star who need steady employment by this point in her career. She later said in an interview, "It meant security. It gave me a new, young audience I wouldn't have had otherwise. It made me 'hot' again, which I wasn't for a while."
Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, and Al Lewis, who played Grandpa, were originally a little uneasy with DeCarlo. The two veteran TV actors--who appeared together just before "The Munsters" on another classic TV sitcom, "Car 54, Where Are You?", were uneasy because DeCarlo had been such a movie star at one time. They reportedly thought she would look down on the rest of the cast.
They found out quickly that nothing could be further from the truth.
Although "The Munsters" ran just two seasons, it has been one of the all-time retro hits, being almost constantly shown in reruns since it went off the air. There have been several TV and big screen films--some starring much of the original cast--and constant talk of revivals.
The show solidified DeCarlo as a baby boomer icon. She was so good as Lily Munster that you really believed that she actually was who you thought she was on the show.
After the show went off the air, DeCarlo continued to act in movies and on TV. She was one of the few redeeming factors in one of Russ Meyer's Hollywood studio-driven films, "The Seven Minutes," a movie which rarely ever gets shown anywhere. She appeared in several other films, and died on January 8, 2007.
Although she had a long and storied career as a film star, DeCarlo will always be remembered as Lily Munster by kids who today are in their 50s and 60s. Even in her garish costume, her beauty was in evidence.
She was the real deal.
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