She became a Hollywood film star and sex symbol in the s and s, made several musical recordings, and later acted on television and stage. De Carlo was born in Vancouver , British Columbia and was enrolled in a local dance school by her mother when she was three. By the early s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo entered beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs. In , she signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures , where she got uncredited bit parts in important films.
Her first lead was for producer E. Derr in the James Fenimore Cooper adventure Deerslayer. She obtained her breakthrough role in Salome, Where She Danced , a Universal Pictures release produced by Walter Wanger , who described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world. Universal starred her in its lavish Technicolor productions, such as Frontier Gal , Song of Scheherazade , and Slave Girl Cameramen voted her "Queen of Technicolor" three years in a row.
Her career reached its peak when eminent producer-director Cecil B. Yvonne , her best-selling autobiography, was published in A stroke survivor, De Carlo died of heart failure in She was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures and television.
On the evening of August 31 that year [], three days after her own birthday, Marie was having five-minute contractions. She was taken to the public ward of St. Paul's Hospital, where she went through a difficult labor. I was born the following morning amid the tumult of the season's worst thunderstorm. Marie's doctor hadn't arrived, and the delivery was made by a pair of floor nurses. They confirmed afterward that as she was being shifted to the delivery table, she was shouting, "I want a girl.
It must be a girl. I want a dancer! Her nickname was "Peggy" because she was named after the silent film star Baby Peggy.
