Fantasy wimmin

While I've been off this week I noticed that the BBC was repeating the Munsters in the morning; I remember the repeats of the Munsters and the Addams Family from when I was a kid and it's interesting to see that they still keep getting repeated to new audiences (and those already converted like me) - and that they are still brilliant. Yvonne de Carlo who played Lily Munster passed away earlier this year, but it is nice to see her again in her prime (she was well-known as a very glamorous actress in the 50s before the Munsters came along). Like the Addams the Munsters plays with the conventions of the sit-com in a way that is pretty remarkable for the period, its still funny and the characters are great - watching the repeats has put a big smile on my face. It also reminded me of how much I fancied both Lily Munster and Morticia Addams when I was younger; I still do and suspect they played a major role in shaping my adoration of Gothic gals. So for no particular reason I thought I'd pick out a few women from the fantasy genres who have to rate as gorgeous.

1) Carolyn Jones as Morticia Addams - the epitome of the luscious Gothic femme, long before it became a popular image or subculture and her demure performance was the perfect foil for John Astin's manic Gomez as he would grab her arm and kiss his way up it. And just how did they get even such a slim woman into that tight dress??? I do wish someone could sort out the various rights problems to reprint a collection of Charles Addams' original New Yorker cartoons which started them all off though. Meantime I make do with teasing my uncle who has a remarkable resemblance to the Addams' Uncle Fester.



2) Yvonne de Carlo as Lily Munster



If you do a bit of Googling you can easily find more pictures of Carolyn from her Hollywood Days in films like Salome, when she was considered a tremedously glamorous and sexy actress. The Munsters was never quite as good as the Addams Family, but as my dad once said, being slightly worse made it better in some ways. I loved the way Yvonne played the exotic Lily utterly straight, like a regular mother and wife, underplaying for comic effect perfectly and delivering a different sort of beauty from Carolyn's Morticia but just as enticing.