Lily Munster, Countess of Shroudshire (née
Dracula), is a
fictional characterA character is the representation of a person in a narrative or dramatic work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr through its Latin transcription character, the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its...
in the
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is an American television network, one of television's original "big three", which also include NBC and ABC. Like NBC, CBS started out as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System...
sitcom
The MunstersThe Munsters is a 1960s American television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. The show was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era, such as Leave It to Beaver. It ran concurrently with the The Addams Family. Although the...
, played by
Yvonne De CarloYvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American film and television actress, dancer and singer. In her six-decade career, her most prolific appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as Salome Where She Danced and The Ten Commandments, opposite...
. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is an
undeadUndead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...
vampireVampires are legendary creatures said to subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, generally by drinking their blood. Although typically described as undead, some minor traditions believed in vampires that were living people....
. Her character was loosely based upon
VampiraMaila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress, who created the campy 1950s character Vampira. Her portrayal of this character as television's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space was influential over the decades that followed.-Early life:Born as Maila Elizabeth...
, who was coincidentally based upon
Charles AddamsCharles Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters...
's
Morticia AddamsMorticia A. Addams is the fictional matriarch of "The Addams Family", created by cartoonist Charles Addams.Morticia is the wife of Gomez Addams and mother of Wednesday and Pugsley. The character originated in the Charles Addams cartoons for The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s. In the cartoons,...
. The role was later played by
Lee MeriwetherLee Ann Meriwether is Miss America 1955, and an American actress, appearing primarily in movies, soap operas and television...
in
The Munsters TodayThe Munsters Today is an American syndicated television series that was a sequel from the 1960s sitcom The Munsters.-Production:The Munsters Today broadcast 72 episodes from October 8, 1988 to May 25, 1991...
.
Lily was born in 1827 to
Sam DraculaSam Dracula, Count of Transylvania , is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, played by Al Lewis. The doting, irritable, and sarcastic father of Lily Munster, Grandpa is an undead vampire...
(Grandpa) and his 166th wife (referred to only as "Grandma").
Lily Munster, Countess of Shroudshire (née
Dracula), is a
fictional characterA character is the representation of a person in a narrative or dramatic work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr through its Latin transcription character, the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its...
in the
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is an American television network, one of television's original "big three", which also include NBC and ABC. Like NBC, CBS started out as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System...
sitcom
The MunstersThe Munsters is a 1960s American television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. The show was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era, such as Leave It to Beaver. It ran concurrently with the The Addams Family. Although the...
, played by
Yvonne De CarloYvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American film and television actress, dancer and singer. In her six-decade career, her most prolific appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as Salome Where She Danced and The Ten Commandments, opposite...
. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is an
undeadUndead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...
vampireVampires are legendary creatures said to subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, generally by drinking their blood. Although typically described as undead, some minor traditions believed in vampires that were living people....
. Her character was loosely based upon
VampiraMaila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress, who created the campy 1950s character Vampira. Her portrayal of this character as television's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space was influential over the decades that followed.-Early life:Born as Maila Elizabeth...
, who was coincidentally based upon
Charles AddamsCharles Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters...
's
Morticia AddamsMorticia A. Addams is the fictional matriarch of "The Addams Family", created by cartoonist Charles Addams.Morticia is the wife of Gomez Addams and mother of Wednesday and Pugsley. The character originated in the Charles Addams cartoons for The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s. In the cartoons,...
. The role was later played by
Lee MeriwetherLee Ann Meriwether is Miss America 1955, and an American actress, appearing primarily in movies, soap operas and television...
in
The Munsters TodayThe Munsters Today is an American syndicated television series that was a sequel from the 1960s sitcom The Munsters.-Production:The Munsters Today broadcast 72 episodes from October 8, 1988 to May 25, 1991...
.
Origins
Lily was born in 1827 to
Sam DraculaSam Dracula, Count of Transylvania , is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, played by Al Lewis. The doting, irritable, and sarcastic father of Lily Munster, Grandpa is an undead vampire...
(Grandpa) and his 166th wife (referred to only as "Grandma"). She lived with Grandpa for some time in
TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term frequently encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
before meeting
Herman MunsterHerman Munster, 5th Earl of Shroudshire , is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, played by Fred Gwynne...
and marrying him in 1865. She, Grandpa, and Herman moved to America sometime before the mid-1940s and adopted her sister's child,
MarilynMarilyn Munster is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, played by Pat Priest . In the original series she is the daughter of Lily Munster's sister, with Herman alluding to her "plain" looks coming from Lillie's side of the family...
. In the mid-1950s she gave birth to
EddieEdward Wolfgang "Eddie" Munster, is a fictional character based on Holland Street resident Edward Munter on the CBS sitcom The Munsters, played by Butch Patrick. The only child of Herman and Lily Munster, Eddie is a werewolf...
, her and Herman's only child.
Description
Lily is the matriarch of the Munster family. She is very close with her niece, Marilyn. She has a
werewolfA werewolf or werwolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely, by being bitten or scratched by another werewolf, or after being placed under a curse...
for a brother, who appears in one episode, and a sister who is mentioned a few times who is Marilyn's mother. Lily is the voice of reason in the Munster household, often relied upon to set problems right, and typically mediates when Herman and Grandpa squabble.
Lily is mainly a
housewifeHousewife is a term used to describe a married female who is not employed outside of the home.-Multicultural norms:In agriculture studies, the word "housewife" is occasionally used referring to the person who does the majority of the chores within a farm's compound, as opposed to field and...
, and her duties include spreading garbage around the
mansionA mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. realtors define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
and "dusting" with a
vacuum cleanerA vacuum cleaner is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from floors...
operating in reverse so that it blows dirt about in the nine-room-and-a-dungeon house. During the course of the series, Lily works as a
welderA welder is a tradesman who specialises in welding materials together. The materials to be joined can be metals or varieties of plastic or polymer...
in a shipyard, a
fashion modelthumb|200px|Alesya Nazarova modeling a dress by [[bebe stores|bebe]]A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed for the purpose of displaying and promoting fashion clothing or other products and for advertising or promotional purposes or who poses for works of art.Modeling...
, and a
palm readerPalmistry or chiromancy , is the art of characterization and foretelling the future through the study of the palm, also known as palm reading, or chirology. The practice is found all over the world, with numerous cultural variations...
in a tea room. In one episode she forces Herman to give her money so that she and Marilyn can open a
beauty parlorA beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment dealing with cosmetic treatments for men and women. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons and spas....
, but this soon goes out of business, as Lily assumes her clientele wants to look more like her. These
part timeA part-time job is a form of employment that carries fewer hours per week than a full-time job. Workers are considered to be part-time if they commonly work fewer than 30 or 35 hours per week...
jobs never seem to stick, and Lily would be back to being a homemaker by the next episode. Once, when she thinks Herman is going broke, she gets a job to help out, keeping this a secret, lest it wound Herman's pride. In some ways, Lily is a proto-feminist, striving against Herman's more traditional family values.
Lily is a beautiful and slender woman who appears to be in her
middle ageMiddle age is the period of life beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings....
years, although she is actually hundreds of years old. Her skin was green, which repelled some people. Later incarnations of the character, played by different actresses, would change her skin from green to pale white. A white streak in her hair recalls the monster's mate from
Bride of FrankensteinBride of Frankenstein is a horror film, the first sequel to the influential Frankenstein...
. Lily usually dresses in an ankle-length pale pink gown that appears faded and old, sometimes covering up with a scarf. Her
necklaceA necklace is an article of jewellery which is worn around the neck. Necklaces are frequently formed from a metal jewellery chain, often attached to a locket or pendant...
features a bat-shaped
medallionthumb|World Trade Center Commemorative Medallions and certificates of authenticity, 2001A medallion is a piece of metal, usually carved or engraved; circular and large, that is used as a work of art, souvenir, medal, or worn on the body as a special symbol or as a fashion accessory on a necklace ....
. When away from the Munster house, she sometimes wears a long silver cape with a hood. She never seems to have any specific powers like her father.
Development
Lily was not in the original pilot episode of
The Munsters. Instead, Herman is married to a much more Gothic-looking wife named Phoebe, played by
Joan MarshallJoan Marshall was an American actress.-Early life and career:Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Marshall began her career as a showgirl in Chicago clubs. After appearing as a dancer in the 1945 film The Chicago Kid and a part in the television series Have Gun – Will Travel in 1958, she moved to...
. The producers scrapped the Phoebe character after deciding she seemed almost an exact double of the
Morticia AddamsMorticia A. Addams is the fictional matriarch of "The Addams Family", created by cartoonist Charles Addams.Morticia is the wife of Gomez Addams and mother of Wednesday and Pugsley. The character originated in the Charles Addams cartoons for The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s. In the cartoons,...
character on
The Addams FamilyThe Addams Family is an American television series based on the characters in Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 installments on ABC from September 18, 1964 to April 8, 1966...
. Lily appeared in the second pilot and all other episodes.
Yvonne De CarloYvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American film and television actress, dancer and singer. In her six-decade career, her most prolific appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as Salome Where She Danced and The Ten Commandments, opposite...
was cast for the role in March 1964. When first cast, Gwynne and Lewis went to the producers and complained because De Carlo was a movie star of long standing and they were worried that she would not fit in. However, after a few shows, they had to admit they had been wrong, and all got on well.