Carole Landis

Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American actress. 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.

She was signed by Warner Bros. in late 1936, and went on to appear in two dozen features, mostly for Bryan Foy's low-budget "B" unit (including gradually increasing roles in four Torchy Blane comedies, some of which gave her screen credit). By 1938 she was working in the studio's major motion pictures like The Adventures of Robin Hood and Boy Meets Girl, but only in uncredited bits.

Dissatisfied with her lack of progress, she moved on to Republic Pictures, a small but efficient studio specializing in action pictures. The smaller studio paid more attention to her, giving her ingenue leads in two Three Mesquiteers westerns and a serial, Daredevils of the Red Circle.

Pioneer producer Hal Roach was preparing One Million B.C., a dramatic film about prehistoric people menaced by the elements. He hired another movie pioneer, D. W. Griffith, to cast the picture. It was to be a rugged shoot, with many scenes staged outdoors. Roach recalled:

We had already decided on Victor Mature as the man and Lon Chaney [Jr.] as the father. They brought in girls. [Griffith] looked at them. Every time these girls came in, he took them to the back lot. I didn't know what the hell he was doing in the open spaces. Then one day he said, "I found your girl." It was Carole Landis. We went out on the back lot where there was street scenery and, on the corner, a telephone post. He looked at the girl and said, "Take your shoes off. Now run to that post as fast as you can. Then run back to me as fast as you can." She did. I wasn't particularly impressed. That's a hell of a way to pick our leading lady. He said, "I've had 50 girls run to that post and back. She's the only one who knows how to run. You're not going to make a believable girl in a picture of that kind who runs like an average girl. She's got to run like an athlete, a deer." And she could. Her rhythm was really beautiful. In the picture you never noticed it. But if she ran like most girls, you would damn well have seen the difference.

Hal Roach saw star potential in Carole Landis, and signed her to a contract in June 1940. He continued casting her in three more starring roles, the best known being Turnabout (1940) a role-reversal farce written by Thorne Smith and co-starring John Hubbard.