Lily Munster
Encyclopedia
Lily Munster, Countess of Shroudshire (née Dracula), is a fictional character
in the CBS
sitcom The Munsters
, originally played by Yvonne De Carlo
. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is an undead
vampire
. Her character resembles Vampira
. The role was later played by Lee Meriwether
in The Munsters Today
.
before meeting Herman Munster
and marrying him in 1865. She, Grandpa, and Herman moved to America sometime before the mid-1940s and adopted her sister's child, Marilyn
. In the mid-1950s she gave birth to Eddie
, her and Herman's only child.
Her name is presumably derived from the tradition of the lily as a flower of death, or a vague reference to Lilith
one of mythology's oldest known vampires.
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 housewife
, and her duties include spreading garbage around the mansion
and "dusting" with a vacuum cleaner
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 welder
in a shipyard, a fashion model
, and a palm reader
in a tea room. In one episode she forces Herman to give her money so that she and Marilyn can open a beauty parlor
, but this soon goes out of business, as Lily assumes her clientele wants to look more like her. These part time
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 age
years, although she is actually 137 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 Frankenstein
. Lily usually dresses in an ankle-length pale pink gown that appears faded and old, sometimes covering up with a scarf. Her necklace
features a bat-shaped medallion. 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. However she's "light on her feet" by means of floating through the air from time to time. And she's strong enough to beat Herman in an arm wrestle, or knock out Herman with one punch, like Sonny Liston
.
. The producers scrapped the Phoebe character after deciding she seemed almost an exact double of the Morticia Addams
character on The Addams Family
. Lily appeared in the second pilot and all other episodes.
Yvonne De Carlo
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.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
sitcom The Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...
, originally played by Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American actress of film and television. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as of Anna Marie in Salome Where She Danced ; Anna in Criss Cross ; Sephora the...
. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is an undead
Undead
Undead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased and yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...
vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
. Her character resembles Vampira
Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s characterVampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space...
. The role was later played by Lee Meriwether
Lee Meriwether
Lee Ann Meriwether is an American actress, former model, and the winner of the 1955 Miss America pageant. She is perhaps best known for her role as Betty Jones, the crime-solving partner in the long-running 1970s crime drama, Barnaby Jones. The role earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations in...
in The Munsters Today
The Munsters Today
The Munsters Today is an American sitcom that aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The series served as a sequel to the 1960s sitcom The Munsters.-Production:...
.
Origins
Lily was born in 1827 to Sam Dracula (Grandpa) and his 166th wife (referred to only as "Grandma"). She lived with Grandpa for some time in TransylvaniaTransylvania
Transylvania 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 sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
before meeting Herman Munster
Herman Munster
Herman Munster, 5th Earl of Shroudshire, is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, originally played by Fred Gwynne. The patriarch of the Munster household, Herman is an entity much like Frankenstein's monster along with Lurch on the show's competitor The Addams Family.Due to the...
and marrying him in 1865. She, Grandpa, and Herman moved to America sometime before the mid-1940s and adopted her sister's child, Marilyn
Marilyn Munster
Marilyn Munster is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, originally played by Beverley Owen with actress Pat Priest later assuming the role. In the original series she is the daughter of Lily Munster's sister, with Herman alluding to her "plain" looks coming from Lily's side of the...
. In the mid-1950s she gave birth to Eddie
Eddie Munster
Edward Wolfgang "Eddie" Munster is a fictional character on the CBS sitcom The Munsters, originally played by Butch Patrick. The only child of Herman and Lily Munster, Eddie is a werewolf...
, her and Herman's only child.
Her name is presumably derived from the tradition of the lily as a flower of death, or a vague reference to Lilith
Lilith
Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons Līlīṯu in Mesopotamian texts. However, Lowell K. Handy notes, "Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view...
one of mythology's oldest known vampires.
Description
Lily is the matriarch of the Munster family. She is very close with her niece, Marilyn. She has a werewolfWerewolf
A werewolf, 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 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 housewife
Housewife
Housewife is a term used to describe a married woman with household responsibilities who is not employed outside the home. Merriam Webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household...
, and her duties include spreading garbage around the mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers 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 cleaner
Vacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner, commonly referred to as a "vacuum," is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from floors, and optionally from other surfaces as well. The dirt is collected by either a dustbag or a cyclone for later disposal...
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 welder
Welder
A welder is a tradesman who specializes in welding materials together. The materials to be joined can be metals or varieties of plastic or polymer...
in a shipyard, a fashion model
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
, and a palm reader
Chiromancy
Palmistry 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 parlor
Beauty salon
A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment dealing with cosmetic treatments for men and women...
, but this soon goes out of business, as Lily assumes her clientele wants to look more like her. These part time
Part time
A 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 age
Middle age
Middle age is the period of age 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 137 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 Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American horror film, the first sequel to Frankenstein...
. Lily usually dresses in an ankle-length pale pink gown that appears faded and old, sometimes covering up with a scarf. Her necklace
Necklace
A necklace is an article of jewellery which is worn around the neck. Necklaces are frequently formed from a metal jewellery chain. Others are woven or manufactured from cloth using string or twine....
features a bat-shaped medallion. 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. However she's "light on her feet" by means of floating through the air from time to time. And she's strong enough to beat Herman in an arm wrestle, or knock out Herman with one punch, like Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston
Charles L. "Sonny" Liston was a professional boxer and ex-convict known for his toughness, punching power, and intimidating appearance who became world heavyweight champion in 1962 by knocking out Floyd Patterson in the first round...
.
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
Joan 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 Addams
Morticia Addams
Morticia A. Addams is the fictional matriarch of "The Addams Family", created by cartoonist Charles Addams and based on his first wife Barbara .Morticia is the wife of Gomez Addams and mother of Wednesday Addams and Pugsley Addams...
character on The Addams Family
The Addams Family (TV series)
The 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 Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American actress of film and television. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as of Anna Marie in Salome Where She Danced ; Anna in Criss Cross ; Sephora the...
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.