Carole Landis

Carole Landis, born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste on January 1, 1919, in Fairchild, Wisconsin, was an American actress who worked in film, on Broadway, and as a tireless entertainer for military personnel during World War II. She died on July 5, 1948. The youngest of five children, Landis was the daughter of Clara Ridste, a Polish farmer's daughter, and Alfred Ridste, a Norwegian-American railroad mechanic who left the family shortly after her birth. Her biographer E. J. Fleming has noted that circumstantial evidence suggests her biological father may have been her mother's second husband, Charles Fenner, who departed in April 1921. In 1923, the family relocated to San Bernardino, California, where her mother took on menial work to support the household.

Landis left San Bernardino High School at fifteen and pursued a career in entertainment, beginning as a hula dancer at a San Francisco nightclub called the Royal Hawaiian on Bush Street. She later sang with a dance band. She bleached her hair blonde and took the stage name Carole Landis, drawing the first name from actress Carole Lombard and the surname from baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. After saving one hundred dollars, she moved to Hollywood.

Warner Bros. signed Landis in late 1936, and she appeared in roughly two dozen features, the majority produced through Bryan Foy's low-budget unit. She took on gradually increasing roles in four Torchy Blane comedies and, by 1938, appeared in major studio productions including The Adventures of Robin Hood and Boy Meets Girl, though both parts went uncredited. Seeking greater opportunity, she moved to Republic Pictures, where she received ingenue leads in two Three Mesquiteers westerns and the serial Daredevils of the Red Circle.

Her breakout came when producer Hal Roach cast her as the female lead in the 1940 United Artists film One Million B.C. Roach later recounted that director D. W. Griffith, whom he had hired to cast the picture, selected Landis after observing her run across the studio back lot, noting that she moved with an athletic rhythm unlike any of the other fifty women he had auditioned. Roach signed Landis to a contract in June 1940 and cast her in three additional starring roles, including Turnabout, a 1940 role-reversal farce based on a story by Thorne Smith and co-starring John Hubbard. She returned to Republic for the Judy Canova comedy Sis Hopkins in 1941 before signing with Twentieth Century-Fox. At Fox she appeared opposite Betty Grable in the 1941 musical Moon Over Miami and the 1941 crime drama I Wake Up Screaming. Her final two films, Noose and Brass Monkey, were both produced in Great Britain.

During World War II, Landis became a widely recognized pin-up among servicemen and devoted considerable time to USO work. In 1942 she traveled to England and North Africa alongside comedian Martha Raye, dancer Mitzi Mayfair, and actress Kay Francis. Two years later she entertained troops in the South Pacific with Jack Benny. Over the course of the war she logged more than 100,000 miles of travel, a total that made her the actress who spent the most time in USO service. The tours took a physical toll; she contracted both amoebic dysentery and malaria during her travels. She documented her wartime experiences in writing, contributing newspaper and magazine articles on the subject and publishing the 1944 book Four Jills in a Jeep, which was subsequently adapted into a film co-starring Kay Francis, Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair. She also wrote the foreword to Vic Herman's cartoon book Winnie the WAC.

In 1945, Landis appeared on Broadway in the musical A Lady Says Yes, a production that featured future novelist Jacqueline Susann in a small role. Susann is reported to have drawn on Landis, at least in part, when creating the character of Jennifer North for her best-selling novel Valley of the Dolls.

Landis was married four times. At fifteen she married Irving Wheeler in January 1934; her mother had the marriage annulled the following month, though Landis later persuaded her father to permit a remarriage, which took place on August 25, 1934, and ended after three weeks. The two were formally divorced in 1939. On July 4, 1940, she married yacht broker Willis Hunt Jr. in Las Vegas; she left him after two months due to abuse, and they divorced on November 20, 1940. While touring army camps in London in 1942, she met United States Army Air Forces Captain Thomas Wallace, and the two married in January 1943, with their wedding receiving a two-page photo spread in Life magazine. They separated in early 1945 and divorced in July of that year. On December 8, 1945, Landis married Broadway producer W. Horace Schmidlapp. She had no children, a circumstance attributed to endometriosis. Landis was known during her career by the nicknames "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest."