The other stars of the film titled Captain’s Paradise were Alec Guinness, who died in 2000 aged 86, and Celia Johnson who passed on in 1982 aged 73. Guinness is so famous that it is hardly necessary to list his many films but I’ll mention Kind Hearts and Coronets as it is one of my favourites. Johnson is best known for her starring role opposite Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter.
Yvonne de Carlo’s career was less distinguished and she went to her grave being best remembered for her role as ghoulishly gorgeous 156-year-old Lily Munster in the smash hit television series The Munsters.
Yvonne was a Hollywood star, however, when she made Captain’s Paradise in 1953 with Guinness and Johnson.
She played the sultry Moroccan wife Nita of the bigamist Guinness (Captain Adam St. James) while Johnson played his staid English wife Maud living in Gibraltar.
Although Captain’s Paradise was described in a New York review at the time as “…a wonderfully funny little immorality play,” the film censors of the state of Maryland deemed it immoral enough to ban it.
The film has Captain St. James enjoying a splendid (from the point of many men) double life until he mixes up some presents and things go wrong. This is how one reviewer described the plot:
“On the Gibraltar side, the captain goes soberly afoot from his ship to a conventional middle-class cottage. There he is cozily greeted by wife No. 1, a plain but devoted homebody (Celia Johnson) who puts out his pipe and porter, serves up his favourite dumplings, and answers dutifully to his call for “beddy-byes” at 10pm. Otherwise he would be ‘no use on the bridge’.
“On the African side, the captain quickchanges into dove-grey flannels and a snap-brim felt, darts to a waiting taxi and heads, by way of the flower shop, for a glassily sinful flat in one of the tonier hotels.
There he is passionately greeted by wife No. 2, a sexy black-haired baggage (Yvonne de Carlo) who throws the cootch around in nightclubs, guzzles champagne, and takes moonlight plunges in the Mediterranean.”
But the Captain, who congratulates himself on having two women each with half of the things a man wants, doesn’t realise that the demure Maud dreams of sexy adventures while the raunchy Nita wants to settle down and have a family.
All goes smoothly until the captain gets their Christmas presents mixed up; he gives Maud a bikini and Nita an apron. To the his consternation both women are overjoyed.
Captain’s Paradise was directed by Alec Coppel and is quite funny in the style of an Ealing comedy. Johnson is very good as Maud and Guinness and de Carlo carry their parts well, although Guinness is more convincing as the dull husband than the cha cha lover.
There are several scenes of Gibraltar but almost all of them are exterior shots. You can see a Saccone and Speed lorry in one scene and one party sequence was filmed on the terrace of The Rock Hotel.
Yvonne de Carlo was born Peggy Yvonne Middleton on 1st September, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was three when her father deserted the family and her mother turned to waitressing to make ends meet.
Deciding on entertainment as a way out of poverty Yvonne’s mother enrolled her daughter in dance and acting schools.
Yvonne was a brash, confident and pretty 15-year-old when her mother took her to Hollywood in 1937. The first trip ended in failure but the pair returned from Canada in 1940 and Yvonne found work dancing in chorus lines. She made her first film, Harvard Here I Come in 1941. The biggest name in the film was an ex-boxer named ‘Slapsie’ Maxie Rosenbloom, For several years Yvonne played small parts, usually as a secretary or, because of her dark coloring, a native girl, and she didn’t get her big break until 1945 when she landed the title role in Salome Where She Danced. She had top billing above co-star Rod Cameron.
Yvonne worked steadily through the 1950s but few of her movies are memorable. They were mainly ‘B’ flicks with suggestive titles such as — Frontier Gal, Slave Girl, Casbah and Scarlet Angel. She did play the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in The Ten Commandments and received acclaim for her performance as Amantha Starr in Band of Angels.
By the early sixties Yvonne was reduced to taking what television parts she was offered and it has been said that she only took the role of Lily Munster because she was in dire financial straits. The Munsters ran for three seasons and gave Yvonne financial security.
The series led to the 1966 movie Munster, Go Home, in which the family of ghouls travels to England after inheriting a castle.
Yvonne De Carlo died of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television facility in Woodland Hills, California on 8th January, 2007.
