Yvonne De Carlo is popping up everywhere these days. Last week, she made a cameo in Fox's "Here Come the Munsters." This Saturday, she plays an eccentric Norma Desmond lookalike who "monkey-sits" a chimp named Archie in "The Barefoot Executive," premiering Saturday on ABC.
Based on the popular 1971 Disney comedy, "The Barefoot Executive" stars Jason London as a young network TV employee hoping for his big break out of the mail room. His ticket to the executive suite is his girlfriend's (Terri Ivens) pet chimp Archie who has the uncanny knack of predicting top-rated TV shows. The satire was directed by Susan Seidelman of "Desperately Seeking Susan" fame.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday November 9, 1995 Home Edition Calendar Part F Page 3 Entertainment Desk 2 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
'Barefoot Executive'-- Julia Sweeney was incorrectly identified in some editions of TV Times Nov. 5 in a photo caption accompanying a story on "The Barefoot Executive," which airs at 9 p.m. Saturday on ABC. It also was incorrectly reported that Yvonne De Carlo, who appears in the film, was nominated for a Tony for the Broadway play "Follies."
Though her part is small, De Carlo, 73, says she had a great time monkeying around in "The Barefoot Executive."
"She is a woman who used to be a stand-in for movie people," De Carlo says of her character. "There are still people who live back in the '30s. I have known people like her. She has these outrageous costumes--six of them--and it's just a small part. But I like to do small things now."
Among them was her recent cameo in "Here Come the Munsters" in which she was reunited with the stars of the 1964-65 CBS series, Al Lewis, Pat Priest and Butch Patrick. (Fred Gwynne died in 1993.) But this time around, De Carlo wasn't decked out in her Lily Munster outfit and makeup.
"We didn't have to be in costumes because the Munsters have several lives," she explains. "So they are in sort of modern clothes. I was sort of resentful when Pat Priest yelled at me, 'I haven't seen you for 30 years!' I said, 'Why don't you shut up! Thirty years, for god's sake.' She was right. But I am not very good at facing that sort of fact of 30 years. Fifteen sounds awful long to me."
After 50 years in the business, De Carlo took a year off from acting. "For a while there I didn't want to work. I think I got burned out. All of a sudden, I didn't have any more interest in any of that. I took a break." But now she has an agent. "I have somebody who is really getting me in there and finding me things. I pick what I want. I'm back in the mood, obviously. What I should do actually is the voice-over thing. My voice is somehow recognizable even to clerks and people on the phone."
De Carlo lives north of Los Angeles near Solvang. "Not in the Danish Disneyland, but up on a hill," she says, laughing. "It's really nice. I have a view and a pool and I lived for 12 years without any cable. Now I have cable. It's quite interesting. Imagine someone living with only two stations all that time. I have a huge library of movies and documentaries."
