Margaret Yvonne Kao Middleton (September 1, 1922 – January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Hollywood film star in the 1940s and 1950s, made several recordings, and later acted on television and stage. DeCarlo was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and was enrolled in a local dance school by her mother when she was three. By the early '40s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo entered beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs. In 1941, she began working in short-subject motion pictures. She sang "The Lamp of Memory" in a three-minute Soundies musical; in 1942, she signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures, where she got uncredited bit parts in important films. Her first lead was for producer E. B. Derr in the 1943 James Fenimore Cooper adventure Deerslayer. She obtained her breakthrough role in
Salome, Where She Danced (1945), a Universal Pictures release produced by Walter Wanger, who described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." The film's publicity and success turned her into a star, and she signed a five-year contract with Universal. Universal s...
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