page_title: Yvonne De Carlo
section_title: The Ten Commandments and last notable film roles (1954–1963)
hierarchical_section_title: Yvonne De Carlo / Stardom / The Ten Commandments and last notable film roles (1954–1963)
caption_attribution_description: English: Publicity photo of Clark Gable and Yvonne de Carlo in Band of Angels.
context_page_description: Yvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer. A brunette with blue-grey eyes, she became an internationally famous Hollywood film star in the 1940s and 1950s, made several recordings, and later acted on television and stage.
  Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, De Carlo was raised in the home of her Presbyterian maternal grandparents. Her mother enrolled her in a local dance school when she was three. By the early 1940s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo participated in beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs.
  She began working in motion pictures in 1941, in short subjects. She sang "The Lamp of Memory" in a three-minute Soundies musical, and worked briefly at Columbia Pictures. In 1942, she signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures, where she was given uncredited bit parts in important films and was intended to replace Dorothy Lamour. Her first lead was for independent producer E.B. Derr in the James Fenimore Cooper adventure Deerslayer.
context_section_description: In September 1954, producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Zipporah, the wife of Moses (played by Charlton Heston), in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments, a Paramount Pictures production that premiered in November 1956. In his autobiography, DeMille explained he decided to cast De Carlo as Moses' wife after his casting director, Bert McKay, called his attention to one scene she played in Sombrero. Even though the film "was a picture far removed in theme from The Ten Commandments", wrote DeMille, "I sensed in her a depth, an emotional power, a womanly strength which the part of Sephora needed and which she gave it."
  She prepared extensively for the role, taking weaving lessons at the University of California, Los Angeles, and shepherding lessons in the San Fernando Valley. Months before filming began, she had worked on the part with a drama coach. Her scenes were shot on Paramount's sound stages in 1955. Her performance received praise from critics. Crowther, the New York Times critic, was impressed: "Yvonne De Carlo as the Midianite shepherdess to whom Moses is wed is notably good in a severe role." The Hollywood Reporter wrote that she "is very fine as the simple Sephora," and New York Daily News noticed that she "plays the wife of Moses with conviction."
  She fell in love with stuntman Bob Morgan while visiting the filming of The Ten Commandments in Egypt in 1954. They married in 1955, and their first son, Bruce, was born in 1956. DeMille became Bruce's godfather. Her second pregnancy meant she had to turn down the role of the female pirate DeMille had given her in his next production, The Buccaneer (1958).
  It was announced she would team with Vittorio De Sica in an adaptation of The Baker's Wife to be shot in English and Italian but the film was never made. Neither were two projects de Carlo was meant to make in Italy following Raw Edge, The Mistress of Lebanon Castle with Trevor Howard and Honeymoon in Italy.
  Instead De Carlo co-starred with George Sanders and Zsa Zsa Gabor in Death of a Scoundrel (1956). The New York Times commended her performance as Bridget Kelly: "Yvonne De Carlo does a solid and professional job as the adoring petty thief who rises to eminence with him [Sanders' character]." On the small screen she was in "Skits & Sketches" for Shower of Stars (1957). She was also in Schlitz Playhouse (1957)
  De Carlo released an LP record of standards called Yvonne De Carlo Sings on Masterseal Records, a subsidiary label of Remington Records, in 1957. Orchestrated by future film composer John Williams under the pseudonym "John Towner", the album contains ten tracks, "End of a Love Affair", "In the Blue of Evening", "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)", "Am I Blue?", "Little Girl Blue", "Blue Moon", "But Not for Me", "My Blue Heaven", "Mood Indigo", "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)".
  As a result of the great success and positive reviews of The Ten Commandments, De Carlo was offered lead roles in two Warner Bros. films that would be shot at the same time: The Helen Morgan Story and Band of Angels, based on Robert Penn Warren's novel. De Carlo chose the latter because her co-star would be Clark Gable, one of her favorite actors. The title refers to the short life expectancy of the black soldiers who fought with the Union troops in the Civil War, but the story is mainly about Amantha "Manty" Starr, a mixed-race Southern belle who is sold as a slave after her father's death and discovers that her deceased mother was a black slave on her father's plantation. Amantha is then taken to New Orleans where she is bought by plantation owner Hamish Bond (Gable), who falls in love with her. The film was both a critical and financial disappointment at the time of release.
  De Carlo was in "Verdict of Three" for Playhouse 90 (1958). She made a French Foreign Legion movie with Victor Mature, Timbuktu, directed by Jacques Tourneur (1958). She unsuccessfully auditioned for the Broadway musical Destry Rides Again losing out to Dolores Gray.
  In May 1958, De Carlo was signed to play Mary Magdalene in the Italian b
caption: With Clark Gable in Band of Angels (1957)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 (20060914.r.77)  Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:10:28 19:04:32", "Image ExifOffset": "188", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "326", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9967", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "735"}