Carole Landis, gone too soon

Argh! My kingdom for an edit feature on DL!

She was a huge whore!

Didn't Rachel Roberts also kill herself because of Rex Harrison?

Glad to see more Old Hollywood posts again (my favorite). I can’t imagine being married five times before 30. Won’t post it, but I accidentally came across a photo of her suicide while googling it. How awful.

Here are more photos of Carole on a website run by her great niece.

R3, yes! He was also married SIX times. Not to mention multiple affairs. I don’t find him particularly attractive, but this guy must have had a magical schlong. Anybody here ever see it??

Carole's last day.

So sad. I'm embarrassed about how morbid I am.

Carlos Thompson, Lilli Palmer's husband after Rex Harrison, was quite good looking.

"This was at least the third time she had attempted suicide but in the past she had always been rescued by friends."

I mean, Rex as obviously a lout, but I think this explains it all. She probably had borderline personality disorder - suicide and suicide attemps are common, along with self-harm, with that condition.

*Rex WAS - and I misspelled attempts... common with the condition of illiteracy... sorry about that.

Zanuck's 4pm.

Quite big tits.

Aw, OP, she sounds like she was troubled and threw herself into work to feel better.

All of her traveling during WWII to entertain the troops probably helped keep her depression at bay.

She was a knockout, wasn't she? What a fucking shame. I mean Rex Harrison? Bleh.

Carole’s house today:

Lilli Palmer wrote there was a pet cemetery in Hollywood (later satirized in the novel THE LOVED ONE) that would send a card commemorating your deceased pet each year, saying, “Somewhere in Heaven, Spot” (or whoever) “is thinking of you and wagging his tail today.”

For years the aghast Lilli and Rex received the same type of card every July 5th that said, “Somewhere in Heaven, Carole is thinking of you and wagging her tail today.”

I just fell down the Carole Landis rabbit hole (after watching I Wake Up Screaming)

They published her death photos:

Rex Harrison was a complete doichebag. And a racist to boot. I think that even his own children despised him.

Rex Harrison had so many affairs the movie tabloids and gossip columnists used to refer to him as "Sexy Rexy." On the other hand, he was supposedly an enormous misogynist and extremely rude to women--he regularly referred to them as "cunts" within their hearing (though to be fair, that word is not as offensive to Brits as it is to Americans). He was extremely obnoxious and harassing towards Julie Andrews during rehearsals for "My Fair Lady" and she is reportedly one of the nicest and most professional people in entertainment. (Although she was apparently frustrating for a long time during rehearsals because it took her forever to learn how to do the right Cockney accent--she had had proper diction and an upper-class accent hammered into her as a child star, and getting her to unlearn that finally involved Moss Hart taking her aside for an entire weekend--he had to threaten that if she didn;t get the right accent by the end of the weekend, they would have to let her go.)

Another weird detail about how unpleasant Harrison was--he was apparently enormously flatulent the 1950s and farted constantly during the performances of My fair Lady (both Andrews and Alan jay Jerner talk about this in their memoirs--Andrews describes him as "a windy gentleman").

I didn’t know that she was so helpful to African Americans. Bless her heart for that.

There were rumors that Landis worked as a call girl when she was a young actress trying to make it. She also had the reputation of being, essentially, a studio whore, DTF whatever executives or other bigwigs that needed fucking.

You Must Remember This did an excellent podcast on her:

Is there truth that Carole Landis and Jacqueline Susann had an affair??

Rachel Roberts had been divorced from Harrison for nearly a decade when she took her own life, so I don't think he can be blamed for her suicide. Also, I believe I heard that Jennifer North in VOTD was based on Landis.

Rachel Roberts' method of suicide was much more dramatic than Carole's.

After taking some barbituates, she also swallowed some drain cleaner to make sure the job got done. The drain cleaner built up pressure in her system and exploded tossing her through the sliding glass door in her California home. She did it the weekend that ex Rex was opening in a revival of MY FAIR LADY in LA and hoped to get the headlines - but her body wasn't discovered for about a week - so no go, RR.

Yikes r23

Shit R23.

I'm wondering if Landis went back in the bathroom to puke. That many pills make you nauseous.

R20, thank you so much for that link! I will dive into it today.

R20, I also heard that podcast episode when I ALSO went down an Old Hollywood rabbit hole a few weeks ago. Excellent podcast in general and extremely well researched.

As for Landis, I always got that impression about her even before listening to that epi. She was basically one of the studio's good-time girls but thought she could pull a Crawford or Monroe and become a star from it.

Instead she's closer to a Barbara Payton (another great episode from that podcast).

[quote]Also, I believe I heard that Jennifer North in VOTD was based on Landis.

With a dash of Marilyn?

Jesus said a few good things.

One of them was "Let he who is without sin should cast the first stone, R17 and R18".

And another one, "People who still seethe over events from six decades ago, R17 and R18, could do with looking at themselves".

Carole Landis was good friends with Kay Francis.

Her real name was Frances Ridste.

And they worked poor Francis like a horse; 60 movies in ten years.

R22, She had recently tried to get back with him. Unrequited love was definitely what moved Rachel to her hideous method of suicide.

And given what Carole Landis felt she had to do for her career, plus her association with Harrison, her suicide isn't a mystery.

In the diary of Richard Burton he writes that he and Liz watched in horror as drunk Rachel Roberts crawled about the floor and tried to masturbate a dog.

^ Liz and Dick did worse.

Carole Landis was no Carole Lombard.

She wasn't even a poor man's Rita Hayworth or even a poor man's Betty Grable.

Carole Landis did 60 movies.

But which was the best one?

R35, Landis was originally going to be cast by Zanuck for the title role in My Gal Sal. But Landis refused to dye her hair red for the part. So Zanuck borrowed Rita Hayworth from Columbia to play Sal, and cast Landis in a small part in the film where she gets ditched early in the film by Victor Mature for Rita Hayworth's character.

Carole was very beautiful and had a sensational figure and photographed well. But her singing voice was unpleasantly flat, by comparison Grable sound like Garland. Carole also got bad publicity for her own "wardrobe malfunction" while attending the 1941 Ceremony ceremony when her slip fell out of her dress. By 1942, Zanuck threw Landis into B-films where she came across very well having great screen chemistry with her frequent co-star and friend Caesar Romero. DANCE HALL is a terrific, tough romantic comedy (coming across as more Warners than Fox) and A GENTLEMEN AT HEART about a bookie who gets involved with art forgers is very funny.

Interesting tid-bit. For years it was believed that Caroles1941. B-musical CADET GIRL was lost. Not even Fox had a print of it. One 35 mm copy was discovered at UCLA and was screened at the 2010 Cinecon.....though she was at her most beautiful, and had handsome George Montgomery as a co-star, it had a weak score buy Robin & Rainer and a worse plot. and it was pretty bad.

OFGS, r34. Shut up with your fantasies.