A lily for Lily Munster
Posted: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 2:58 PM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Filed Under:
TV, Tributes
Yvonne DeCarlo, the Hollywood beauty best known to many of us as Lily Munster on "The Munsters," has died at 84.
Although one of my cats is named for Wednesday Addams of the rival monster-family series "The Addams Family," I was really a bigger fan of "The Munsters" as a kid. "Addams" wins out for edginess, but "Munsters" fulfilled its purpose beautifully -- it was a monster-starring spoof of the other black-and-white family comedies of its day, including "Leave It To Beaver" and "The Donna Reed Show."
A poster on Jump the Shark.com called "The Munsters" the original "Osbournes," and I can see the similarities, except that Lily would never, ever pitch a ham into a neighbor's yard, as Sharon Osbourne once did. She was not above taking risks to make a place for her misfit family, but she was also classy and sharp. She loved her family, including goofy husband Herman, a gentle giant who had more than a few things in common with today's Homer Simpson -- Lily and Herman were one of the first (though not the first) TV couple to be shown sharing a bed onscreen.
And in her younger days, DeCarlo was gorgeous enough to give Liz Taylor a scare -- and that beauty was evident even through her Lily vampire makeup and Bride of Frankenstein hair streak. (Strangely, Al Lewis, who played Grandpa, was in real life one year younger than DeCarlo, who played his daughter. Only in TV Land.)
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"Munsters" links
