The first American film star to visit Israel, De Carlo received further recognition as an actress for her leading performances in the British comedies Hotel Sahara (1951), The Captain's Paradise (1953), and Happy Ever After (1954).
Her career reached its peak when eminent producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Moses' Midianite wife, Sephora in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956).
[6] Her success continued with other notable starring roles in Flame of the Islands (1956), Death of a Scoundrel (1956), Band of Angels (1957), and The Sword and the Cross (1958), in which she portrayed Mary Magdalene.
[27] At the Miss Venice contest, she was noticed by a booking agent who told her to audition for an opening in the chorus line at the Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
[34] In January 1941, Granlund sent a telegram to immigration officials pledging his sponsorship of De Carlo in the US, and affirmed his offer of steady employment, both requirements to reenter the country.
At the encouragement of her friend Artie Shaw, who offered to pay her wages for a month,[38] she quit the Florentine Gardens and hired talent agent Jack Pomeroy.
[48] She returned to Paramount for a bit role in Lucky Jordan (1942) and found another small part in a Republic Pictures film, Youth on Parade (1942), which she later called a "dreadful ...
[49] For her first assignment as a Paramount player, De Carlo was loaned to Monogram Pictures to play a Florentine Gardens dancer in Rhythm Parade, starring Nils Granlund (who had requested her for the role) and Gale Storm.
"[50] She asked director Sam Wood for a part in his next film, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and he gave her a small role in the cantina scene with Gary Cooper.
In his review of the film, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote: Miss De Carlo has an agreeable mezzo-soprano singing voice, all the 'looks' one girl could ask for, and, moreover, she dances with a sensuousness which must have caused the Hays office some anguish.
[citation needed] De Carlo followed Frontier Gal with a top-billed role in Walter Reisch's Technicolor musical Song of Scheherazade (1947), co-starring Brian Donlevy and Jean-Pierre Aumont.
"[71] The New York Times later summarised them as "a series of routine costume adventures as a tough but good-natured minx from across the tracks who wades into society and inevitably backtracks with a bloke of her own caliber.
[86] In 1951,[87][4][88] De Carlo accepted an offer to open the thirtieth season of the Hollywood Bowl singing the breeches role of Prince Orlovsky in five performances of the opera Die Fledermaus (The Bat), from July 10 to 14.
"[90] In August 1951, De Carlo became the first Canadian film star to visit the State of Israel, giving concerts in Haifa, Ramat Gan, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Jaffa.
The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther commended her performance by writing, "And Miss De Carlo, as the siren, 'the mate of the tiger' in Mr. G. [Guinness], is wonderfully candid and suggestive of the hausfrau in every dame.
"[101] De Carlo made a fourth film in England, Happy Ever After (1954) released in the U.S. as "Tonight's The Night", a comedy featuring her as the love interest for David Niven, who inherits an estate in Ireland.
[citation needed] In September 1954,[105] producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (played by Charlton Heston), in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments, a Paramount Pictures production that premiered in November 1956.
Even though the film "was a picture far removed in theme from The Ten Commandments," wrote DeMille, "I sensed in her a depth, an emotional power, a womanly strength which the part of Sephora needed and which she gave it.
Crowther, the New York Times critic, was impressed: "Yvonne De Carlo as the Midianite shepherdess to whom Moses is wed is notably good in a severe role.
The New York Times commended her performance as Bridget Kelly: "Yvonne De Carlo does a solid and professional job as the adoring petty thief who rises to eminence with him [Sanders' character].
"[116] As a result of the great success and positive reviews of The Ten Commandments, De Carlo was offered lead roles in two Warner Bros. films that would be shot at the same time: The Helen Morgan Story and Band of Angels, based on Robert Penn Warren's novel.
She guest-starred on Bonanza ("A Rose for Lotta", 1959), Adventures in Paradise ("Isle of Eden", 1960), Death Valley Days ("The Lady Was an M.D", 1961), Follow the Sun ("The Longest Crap Game in History" [1961] and "Annie Beeler's Place", 1962) and Burke's Law ("Who Killed Beau Sparrow?
When De Carlo was asked how a glamorous actress could succeed as a ghoulish matriarch of a haunted house, she replied simply, "I follow the directions I received on the first day of shooting: 'Play her just like Donna Reed.
Independent producer Sam Sherman hired her for a leading role in Blazing Stewardesses (1975); despite its provocative title, it was a revival of 1940s westerns and co-starred former cowboy heroes Robert Livingston and Don "Red" Barry.
[citation needed] De Carlo was in The Munsters' Revenge (1981), then Liar's Moon (1982), Play Dead (1982), Vultures (1984), Flesh and Bullets (1985), and A Masterpiece of Murder (1986) (with Bob Hope).
[138] In 1950, De Carlo purchased an eleven-room ranch house on five-and-a-half acres of "hilly woodland" on Coldwater Canyon Drive[139] in Studio City, Los Angeles, above Beverly Hills.
"[145] In 1945, after the release of her second film, Frontier Gal, De Carlo returned to Vancouver and attended a celebration held in her honor at her former workplace, the Palomar nightclub, where she was introduced to billionaire Howard Hughes.
Because his contract with MGM assumed no responsibility for the accident, De Carlo and Morgan filed a $1.4 million lawsuit against the studio, claiming her husband was permanently disabled.
[172] In her autobiography, she recounted the time when she "loved to give interviews, and enjoyed being outspoken, or 'good copy,' openly discussing my survival instincts and admitting my to-the-right-of-right politics.
[177] In 1951, during her tour of Israel, she visited the village of Cana: "I saw the place where Christ turned the wine into water, and I couldn't help but think that some film company ought to go there and make the real story of the Bible.