YVONNE DE CARLO was a Canadian-born, American movie actor. The famous beauty was at the height of her film career in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1956 she won a leading role in Cecil B De Mille’s epic movie The Ten Commandments. Cast as Zephora, her character was the wife of Moses, played by Charlton Heston. But offers of big-screen roles became scarce for De Carlo and, in the year that I was born, 1964, she moved to the small screen to take on what became her most famous role, as Lily Munster in the hit television series The Munsters. Although the series aired for only two seasons, re-runs gave it a remarkably prolonged life and won her generations of fans.[i] On the Sunday after my ninth birthday, I met her.

De Carlo was in Sydney performing in a stage production, and my uncle had heard through the arts community grapevine that she wanted her photograph taken with some Aboriginal children for a newspaper article. He rang my mother and asked if my sister and I would like to have our ‘photo in the paper’.