THE SUICIDE OF CAROLE LANDIS

On July 5, 1948, Rex Harrison found Carole Landis, his lover, on the bathroom floor. He felt her wrist. Detected a faint pulse. And instead of calling an ambulance, he searched for her private doctor's phone number—to avoid a scandal. Rex Harrison was married at the time. When he couldn't find it, he left.

Carole Landis was twenty-nine years old. She had traveled more miles entertaining American troops than any actress in history. She had performed while bombs fell around her. She had nearly died from malaria and dysentery in service to her country. And she died alone, on a bathroom floor, while the married man she loved went home to protect his reputation.

She was born Frances Ridste on New Year's Day, 1919, in Fairchild, Wisconsin.

Her father was a railroad mechanic who abandoned the family before she could remember his face. Her mother worked menial jobs to keep five children fed. At fifteen, Frances dropped out of high school, bleached her hair blonde, and renamed herself Carole Landis—after her favorite actress, Carole Lombard. She started as a hula dancer in a San Francisco nightclub. Her boss said she was "a nervous $35-a-week blonde doing a pathetic hula" who would "never get anyplace in show business." He kept her on because he felt sorry for her. She saved $100 and moved to Hollywood.

Her breakthrough came in 1940 with One Million B.C., where she ran across the screen like a deer—the only actress, the director said, who knew how to run like an athlete. They called her "The Ping Girl." "The Chest." Nicknames that reduced her to curves and cheekbones. She wanted more. She landed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and caught the attention of studio chief Darryl Zanuck. Their affair opened doors—roles opposite Betty Grable in Moon Over Miami, the crime drama I Wake Up Screaming.

Then she ended the relationship. Zanuck stopped furthering her career. She remained under contract but was now assigned to lesser pictures. Critics, when they noticed her films at all, focused on her beauty instead of her talent. "If Hollywood moguls had given Carole a chance," one obituary would later say, "she could have been one of the brightest stars in its history." They never gave her the chance. When America entered World War II, Carole Landis didn't just pose for pin-ups. In October 1942, she joined Kay Francis, Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair for the first all-female overseas USO tour. They traveled to England and North Africa, performing in bombed-out areas still recovering from Luftwaffe raids.
During one show at a forward camp in North Africa, an enemy air alert sounded. Bombs began falling nearby.

Two years later, Carole toured the South Pacific with Jack Benny. She contracted amoebic dysentery. Then malaria. Then near-fatal pneumonia. By the end of the war, she had traveled over 100,000 miles—more than any other actress. She had visited more than 250 military bases. The soldiers called her "The Blonde Bomber" and "Pride of the Yanks." She danced with two hundred soldiers in a single night. She invited them to her beach house on weekends. She wrote hundreds of letters to their families.
She documented everything in a book called Four Jills in a Jeep, which Fox turned into a movie in 1944.

She returned from the Pacific weakened by disease, only to find her sacrifice meant nothing.
Fox dropped her contract. She was ostracized—some said for her ardent feminism, others for rumors about her personal life. Her final two films were made in England, far from the industry that had used her up. Four marriages had failed. She couldn't have children due to endometriosis. Her health never fully recovered from the tropical illnesses she'd contracted serving her country.

Then she met Rex Harrison. Harrison was British, charming, married to actress Lilli Palmer.
None of that stopped the affair from becoming an open secret in Hollywood. Columnist Walter Winchell predicted Harrison would become Carole's fifth husband. She believed it. She filed for divorce from her fourth husband. She put her mansion up for sale. Harrison had no intention of leaving his wife.

On July 4, 1948, Carole hosted a pool party at her Pacific Palisades home. Friends said she was in excellent spirits—happy, laughing, looking forward to a private dinner with Rex that evening.
It was the seventh night in a row they had dined together. That night, over cold chicken, salad, and lemon chiffon pie she had made herself, they argued. Harrison ended the relationship.
He left around nine o'clock. Carole gathered every letter he had ever written her, packed them in a suitcase, and left them at a friend's house with a note saying she intended to kill herself.
The friend didn't find it until the next day.

Back home, Carole wrote two final letters. One to her mother. One, allegedly, to Rex.
"Dearest Mommie," she wrote. "I'm sorry, really sorry, to put you through this but there is no way to avoid it. I love you darling, you have been the most wonderful mom ever... Good bye, my angel. Pray for me. Your Baby."

Around 3 AM, she took five times the lethal dose of Seconal.

The next afternoon, when Harrison couldn't reach her by phone, he drove to her house.
He found her on the bathroom floor. Felt a faint pulse. Instead of calling for help, he searched for her private doctor's number—to avoid a scandal. When he couldn't find it, he went home. Called his boss, Darryl Zanuck. Began damage control. Carole's maid was left to deal with the body.
By the next morning, photographs of Carole Landis lying dead on her bathroom floor appeared on the front pages of hundreds of newspapers across America.

At the coroner's inquest, Harrison denied any romantic involvement. Denied knowing why she might have taken her life. Denied the existence of a second suicide note addressed to him.
Years later, his wife Lilli Palmer admitted they had paid a police officer $500 to destroy that note.
Rex Harrison went on to a long, distinguished career. He won an Oscar for My Fair Lady. He married six times. Carole Landis was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery. Among the mourners were Cesar Romero, Van Johnson, and Pat O'Brien.

Rex Harrison attended with his wife. The newspapers called her death a tragedy of heartbreak, a cautionary tale about loving men who would never choose you. Many of events of that tragic day is shrouded in mystery, and we will never know the truth. What we do know is that Carole Landis' life ended in a waste...