Carole Landis

Landis was born on January 1, 1919, in Fairchild, Wisconsin, the youngest of five children of Clara (née Sentek), a Polish farmer's daughter, and Norwegian-American Alfred Ridste, a drifting railroad mechanic who abandoned the family after Landis's birth. According to Landis's biographer E. J. Fleming, circumstantial evidence supports that Landis was likely the biological child of her mother's second husband, Charles Fenner. Fenner left Landis's mother in April 1921 and remarried a few months later. In 1923, Landis's family moved to San Bernardino, California, where her mother worked menial jobs to support the family. At the age of 15, Landis dropped out of San Bernardino High School and set forth on a career path to show business. She started out as a hula dancer in a San Francisco nightclub, where she was described by her boss as a "nervous $35-a-week blonde doing a pathetic hula at her opening night at the old Royal Hawaiian on Bush [Street]...that'll never get her anyplace in show business". He apparently employed her only because he felt sorry for her; she later sang with a dance band. After saving $100, she moved to Hollywood in 1937. ==Career==

Film career She was signed by Warner Bros. in late 1936 and went on to appear in two dozen features, mostly for Bryan Foy's low-budget "B" unit (including gradually increasing roles in four Torchy Blane comedies, some of which gave her screen credit). By 1938 she was working in the studio's major motion pictures like The Adventures of Robin Hood and Boy Meets Girl, but only in uncredited bits. Dissatisfied with her lack of progress, she moved on to Republic Pictures, a small but efficient studio specializing in action pictures. The smaller studio paid more attention to her, giving her ingenue leads in two Three Mesquiteers westerns and a serial, Daredevils of the Red Circle. Pioneer producer Hal Roach was preparing One Million B.C., a dramatic film about prehistoric people menaced by the elements. He hired another movie pioneer, D. W. Griffith, to cast the picture. It was to be a rugged shoot, with many scenes staged outdoors. Roach recalled: Hal Roach saw star potential in Carole Landis and signed her to a contract in June 1940. He continued casting her in three more starring roles, the best known being Turnabout (1940), a role-reversal farce written by Thorne Smith and co-starring John Hubbard. '', 1941 She returned to Republic for one more film, the Judy Canova comedy Sis Hopkins (1941). She then landed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and began a sexual relationship with studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck. She had roles playing opposite fellow pin-up girl Betty Grable in the musical Moon Over Miami and the crime drama I Wake Up Screaming, both in 1941. When Landis ended her relationship with Zanuck, he stopped furthering her career. She remained under contract but was now assigned to lesser pictures, and Fox loaned her out to other studios three times. Her final two films, Noose and Brass Monkey, were both made in Great Britain. On March 20, 1943 the Fashion Academy had named Landis the best dress women for 1943 in its screen classification category. The Fashion Academy honor was based on an annual poll of leading designers to select the twelve best dressed women of the nation for twelve different classification categories. USO tours Carole Landis became a popular pin-up with servicemen during World War II. Two years later, she entertained soldiers in the South Pacific alongside Jack Benny. During the war, Landis traveled over 100,000 miles and was the actress who spent the most time engaged in this activity. During her travels, she became seriously ill due to amoebic dysentery and malaria. She also wrote the foreword to Vic Herman's cartoon book Winnie the WAC. ==Personal life==

, 1939 and Landis, 1946) Landis was married four times and had no children (she was unable to conceive owing to endometriosis). In 1938, Wheeler reappeared and filed a $250,000 alienation of affections lawsuit against director and choreographer Busby Berkeley. Even though Landis and Wheeler were estranged, he claimed that Berkeley had enticed and otherwise persuaded Landis to transfer her affections. Landis maintained that she had not seen Wheeler in years and had heard from him only the previous year when he claimed to want a divorce. Wheeler's lawsuit was later dismissed, and Landis and Wheeler were divorced in 1939. In June 1939 Berkeley proposed to Landis but later broke it off. On July 4, 1940, she married yacht broker Willis Hunt Jr. in Las Vegas. Landis left Hunt after two months of marriage due to abuse by Hunt; While touring army camps in London in 1942, she met United States Army Air Forces Captain Thomas Wallace. They were married in January 1943, and the wedding received a two-page photo spread in Life magazine. Landis would also write an article about their honeymoon for the June 1943 edition of Photoplay. The couple separated in early 1945, and they would divorce in July 1945. She would state that "No woman ever loved a man more than I loved Tommy Wallace. And Tommy loved me, too. All my life, above all the rest, I want to remember that." During her separation from Schmidlapp, Landis began a relationship with actor Rex Harrison, who was then married to actress Lilli Palmer. After Landis's death, however, Harrison downplayed their relationship and publicly claimed that she was merely a close friend of himself and Palmer. ==Death & Funeral==

Landis was reportedly devastated when Harrison refused to divorce his wife to be with her. On July 5, 1948, unable to cope any longer, she committed suicide in her Pacific Palisades home at 1465 Capri Drive by taking an overdose of Seconal. The next afternoon, Harrison and Landis's maid discovered her on the bathroom floor. According to some sources, Landis left two suicide notes, one for her mother and the second for Harrison, who instructed his lawyers to destroy it. Landis's official website, which her family owns, has questioned the events of Landis's death and the coroner's ruling of suicide. On July 10, 1948 at 12:30 PM her service was held at Forest Lawn's Church of the Recessional by Bishop Fred L. Pyman. During her service Pyman sang her favorite hyme of In the Garden. W. Horace Schmidlapp, her estranged husband, also attended her service and funeral. Rex Harrison attended with his wife however they both left early and had refused to look at Carole in her coffin during viewing. ==Legacy==

Landis has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1765 Vine Street which was dedicated to her on February 8, 1960. On October 4, 2019 Landis was honored with a 28 inch bronze statute that resides inside the Fairchild Public Library in her hometown of Fairchild, Wisconsin. The Carole Landis Fan Club donated the statute, as well as memorabilia related to the actress, to the library. ==Filmography==