Actor Carole Landis Commits Suicide During Affair with Rex Harrison

Actor Carole Landis Commits Suicide During Affair with Rex Harrison

Film actor Carole Landis killed herself after her lover, film and stage actor Rex Harrison, refused to leave his wife, actor Lilli Palmer, for her. Harrison afterward denied that either he or the affair itself had caused Landis's death and went on to a long distinguished film career. On July 5, 1948, actress Carole Landis was found dead in her Pacific Palisades home. In the photo, a detective examines the suicide scene after her body is discovered by her maid and married lover (and object of her despair), Rex Harrison. She died after ingesting five times the amount of Seconol needed to cause death. She had committed suicide at the young age of twenty-nine. Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American actress and singer. She worked as a contract player for Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1940s. Her breakout role was as the female lead in the 1940 film One Million B.C. from United Artists. She was known as "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest" because of her curvy figure. 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. She bleached her hair blonde and changed her name to "Carole Landis" after her favorite actress, Carole Lombard. After saving $100, she moved to Hollywood. Landis was reportedly crushed when Harrison refused to divorce his wife for her; unable to cope any longer, she committed suicide in her Pacific Palisades home at 1465 Capri Drive by taking an overdose of Seconal. 197–199  Harrison was the last person to see her alive, having had dinner with her the night before she committed suicide. The next afternoon, Harrison and Landis's maid discovered her on the bathroom floor. Harrison waited several hours before he called a doctor and the police. 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. 190  During a coroner's inquest, Harrison denied knowing any motive for her suicide and told the coroner he did not know of the existence of a second suicide note. Landis's official website, which is owned by her family, has questioned the events of Landis's death and the coroner's ruling of suicide. She is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, in plot 814 of the "Everlasting Love" section. Among the celebrities at her funeral were Cesar Romero, Van Johnson, and Pat O'Brien. Harrison attended with his wife.

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