Yvonne de Carlo - Early Life

Early Life

The daughter of an aspiring actress, Marie De Carlo, and a salesman, William Middleton, De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in Point Grey, now part of Vancouver, British Columbia, and nicknamed 'Peggy'. "I was named Margaret Yvonne – Margaret because my mother was very fond of one of the derivatives of the name. She was fascinated at the time by the movie star Baby Peggy, and I suppose she wanted a Baby Peggy of her own." Her maternal grandfather, Michael De Carlo, was Sicilian-born, and her maternal grandmother, Margaret Purvis, was Scottish-born. Michael and Margaret worked in the home of the British field marshall Lord Kitchener, as his livery servant and his secretary. Her mother ran away from home when she was 16 to become a ballerina; after a couple of years of working as a shop girl, she was married in 1924. Little Peggy was three years old when her father abandoned the family. She lived with her grandparents. By the time she entered grade school, she found that her strong singing voice brought her the attention she longed for. Although her mother recognized Peggy's singing talent, she had already decided that her daughter would be a dancer. As a teenager Peggy was taken by her mother to Hollywood where she enrolled her in dancing school; she also attended Le Conte Middle School in Hollywood. Margaret lived in a downtown apartment with her mother, while Marie took on odd jobs such as waitressing. Mother and daughter were uprooted when their visas expired. Unable to find work, they returned to Vancouver.

She attended and dropped out of Vancouver's now-defunct King Edward High School, to focus more on her dance studies. She then attended the B.C. School of Dancing. It was there that Canadian dance instructor, June Roper, started her in a new direction, for which she was grateful and relieved. The following year at the Orpheum Theatre, Peggy appeared as a hula dancer in the famous revue Waikiki. A new nightclub, the Palomar, opened in Vancouver, and she acquired a week-long booking. Hoping to present a more sophisticated image, she combined her middle name with her mother's maiden name and became "Yvonne De Carlo."

The pair made several such trips until 1940, when De Carlo was first runner-up to "Miss Venice Beach" and was hired by showman Nils Granlund as a dancer at the Florentine Gardens. She had been dancing for Granlund only a short time when she was arrested by immigration officials and deported to Canada, but in January 1941, Granlund sent a telegram to US immigration officials pledging his sponsorship of De Carlo in the United States, and affirmed his offer of steady employment, both requirements to reenter the country.

Before she worked at Florentine, she also got her first job at 16, working at Vancouver's Palomar, where it expanded from a ballroom to a nightclub in 1938. Her time at the nightclub ended when she allegedly was pressured to expose her breasts. Seeking contract work in the movies, she abruptly quit the Florentine Gardens after less than a year, landing a role as a bathing beauty in the 1941 B-movie Harvard, Here I Come. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll, another Hollywood showman. Her sixth film appearance was at the request of Nils Granlund, and the film Rhythm Parade was set at the Florentine Gardens nightclub in Hollywood.

In December 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor signaled America's entrance into World War II. During this period she engaged in morale boosting performances for U.S. servicemen. De Carlo was a favorite leading lady in the 1940s, and a recipient of many letters from GI's.