Hollywood & Crime: The Life and Death of “The Ping Girl” Carole Landis
Rex Harrison is the worst.
I’ve been reading The Enchanters by James Ellroy. It’s a sleazy, hard-bitten noir that combines real-life and fiction in a way that is commonplace for Ellroy’s work. in this book, the Hollywood fixer-slash-heavyman Freddy Otash finds himself caught up in the death of Marilyn Monroe. There are conspiracies, Kennedys, drugs, divorces, and all the usual heated madness one would find in an Ellroy novel (read American Tabloid for the best example of this.) One unexpected detail that caught me off-guard was the inclusion of Carole Landis, who serves as a warning of sorts to both Marilyn and any wannabe starlet who thinks they can beat the toxic system at its own game.
Her inclusion made me sad, and not just because it was a reminder of her incredibly tragic demise. It was a moment intended to paint a broader portrait of a lineage of tragic Hollywood women who were chewed up, spat out, then essentially blamed for their own deaths. The Dead Blondes of the studio system, if you will. Carole Landis was a lot like Marilyn: a stunning beauty who wanted to be known for her talent but was repeatedly derided as nothing more than a body, and who, in death, became a glamorous cautionary tale.
Born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste in 1919, the future Carole Landis was the youngest of five kids and grew up in San Bernardino, California. She dropped out of school at 15 to pursue her dreams of acting. At first, she hula-danced in nightclubs and sang with a band, although she would be the first to admit that she wasn't much of a dancer. She changed her name to Carole in honour of the actress Carole Lombard, a screwball icon who died in a plane crash. By that point in time, she had married Irving Wheeler, had the marriage annulled by her mother since she was only 15, then remarried him a few months later, only to leave him after a couple of weeks.
As a sort-of single adolescent, she signed her first movie contract with Warner Bros. Mostly, they put her in bit parts in B-movies, ones where she never got screen credit. In 1937, she thought she'd landed her big break when she auditioned for the legendary Busby Berkeley. He gave her a bit part in his musical Varsity Show. They also began an affair. He was 23 years her senior and working his way through what would eventually total six marriages. The roles weren't getting much better so she did a lot of pin-up and publicity photoshoots, usually ones where her legs were on show. Carole was, it must be said, beautiful, and she photographed brilliantly. "The first time I wore a bare midriff gown, Hollywood noticed me. Hollywood didn't discover me, I discovered it," she said.
