A Blog For Thelma Todd
Thelma Todd was a star of silent movies and later the talkies. She is remembered as much today for her mysterious death as she is for her films. In this blog, we take a look at Thelma Todd, her movies, and various commentaries.
A publicity item for that challenges you to name the stars of Vitaphone shorts shown here.
Among the stars pictured are Abe Lyman, Shemp Howard, Fatty Arbuckle, Dorothy Lee, Ruth Etting, and Patricia Ellis.
From "The Vitaphone Project" on facebook, and originally from a May 1934 magazine.
Here are three of the "Four Jills In A Jeep" - Mitzi Mayfair, Carole Landis, and Martha Raye - around their Christmas tree during a tour overseas during World War II.
It's a little late for Christmas pictures, but I like this one and I don't think I used it before, I forgot. So here are three of the "Four Jills In A Jeep" - Mitzi Mayfair, Carole Landis, and Martha Raye - around their Christmas tree during a tour overseas during World War II.
A story in the Sunday Superman comic strip involved the real-life "Hollywood Victory Caravan", although in the comic they didn't seem to be depicting the stars who were actually involved in that effort.
The Hollywood personalities depicted in the strip don't seem to match the ones in the photo below.
The Hollywood Victory Caravan included Eddie
Dowling President of Camp Shows, Ray Bolger, Mitzi
Mayfair, Louis Polanski, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Jane
Pickens, Benay Venuta, and Show M.C. John Garfield.
Another photo showing the entertainers who were part of this effort.
Laurel and Hardy can be seen at the left in this photo.
The first Sunday page in the story has a blonde girl called "Irma Forsythe" who is said to have originally come from Nazi Germany, which sounds like Marlene Dietrich. Although Marlene Dietrich was said to have been the actress who spent the most time entertaining the troops during the war, in real life she was not part of the Hollywood Victory Caravan.
Sometimes in Superman stories they would show depict real-life personalities, such as Orson Welles or even Wheeler and Woolsey*, but they didn't do that in this story.
* Wheeler and Woolsey's likenesses were used in Superman comics, but the characters were not actually identified in the stories as Wheeler and Woolsey. Their characters were calleded "Hocus" and "Pocus", and were a couple of magicians.
“May thy sweet blossom never cease to bloom in love and trust and peace.”
“Strew the fair garlands where slumber the dead.”
“Nor shall their story be forgot”
“Wherever it floats, on land or sea, no stain its honor mars.”
The Civil War ironclad "Merrimac", which fought the "Monitor", was named after the Merrimac river in Massachusetts that Thelma Todd knew.
GLAMOUR HELPS THE WAR EFFORT
History tells us Marlene Dietrich was the glamour girl who spent the most time entertaining the toops during the second World War. Originally from Germany, she entered that country along with the US army in the last part of the war.
Carole Landis was another of the actresses who spent the most time entertaining the troops during the war.
Carole Landis, Kay Francis, and Mitzi Mayfair in North Africa, 1943.
Martha Raye entertains servicemen of the U.S. Army 12th Air Force on a makeshift stage on the edge of the Sahara Desert in North Africa in 1943. (AP Photo)
Martha Raye would be another of the glamour girls who spent the most time entertaining the troops during the second World War.
Martha Raye and Carole Landis
Carole Landis and Jack Benny in the South Pacific, 1944
More Jills in a Jeep
Carole Landis with Jack Benny and Martha Tilton..
Carole Landis and Martha Tilton.
One of the natives is at the right.
Ann Sheridan went to China with a USO group in 1944. A B-25 was specially decorated for the occasion and Ann Sheridan posed with the aircraft.
"What does Amelia Arehart got that I ain't got?"
Paulette Goddard also traveled to the China-Burma-India theater of the war to entertain the toops.
Like Ann Sheridan, she left sooner than originally planned, leading to some complaints. But at least they made some effort to contribute to the war effort. Paulette Goddard's husband Charlie Chaplin made none.
Carole Landis was one of the blondes who worked for Hal Roach after Thelma Todd.
She was a hit in ONE MILLION BC, and became a star. But like Thelma Todd and Jean Harlow, who had been at the Roach studio before her, Carole Landis would come to an untimely end.
Irving Wheeler
(m.1934-1939; divorced)
Willis Hunt Jr.
(m.1940; divorced)
Thomas C. Wallace
(m.1943-1945; divorced)
W. Horace Schmidlapp
(m.1945-1948; her death)
Carole Landis (January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American film and stageactress, who worked as a contract-player for Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1940s. Her breakthrough role was as the female lead in the 1940 film One Million B.C., with United Artists.
She died of an intentional drug overdose the age of 29 in 1948. After her death, newspapers headlined stories about the actress, some with the title "The Actress Who Could Have Been...But Never Was."
Landis dropped out of high school at age 15 and set forth on a career path to show business. She started out as a hula dancer in a San Francisco nightclub and later sang with a dance band.[1] She dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to "Carole Landis" after her favorite actress, Carole Lombard. After saving $100 she moved to Hollywood.[1]
Film career
Her 1937 film debut was as an extra in A Star Is Born; she also appeared in various horse operas.[1] She posed for hundreds of cheesecake photographs.[1] She continued appearing in bit parts until 1940 when Hal Roach cast her as a cave girl in One Million B.C.. The movie was a sensation and turned Landis into a star. A press agent nicknamed her "The Ping Girl" (because "she makes you purr").[1]
Landis appeared in a string of successful films in the early '40s, usually as the second female lead. In a time when the singing of many actresses was dubbed in, Landis's own voice was considered good enough and was used in her few musical roles. Landis landed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and began a sexual relationship with Darryl F. Zanuck. She had roles playing opposite fellow pin-up girl Betty Grable in Moon Over Miami and I Wake Up Screaming, both in 1941. When Landis ended her relationship with Zanuck, her career suffered and she was assigned roles in B-movies.
Her final two films Noose and Brass Monkey were both made in Great Britain.
USO Tours
In 1942, she toured with comedienne Martha Raye, dancer Mitzi Mayfair and actress Kay Francis with a USO troupe in England and North Africa. Two years later, she entertained soldiers in the South Pacific with Jack Benny. Landis traveled more than 100,000 miles during the war and spent more time visiting troops than any other actress. Landis became a popular pin-up with servicemen during World War II.
Broadway
In 1945 she starred on Broadway in the musical A Lady Says Yes with Jacqueline Susann, with whom she reportedly had an affair.[5] Susann purportedly based the character Jennifer North in her book Valley of the Dolls on Landis.
Writing
Landis wrote several newspaper and magazine articles about her experiences during the war, including the 1944 book Four Jills in a Jeep, which was later made into a movie, costarring Kay Francis, Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair. She also wrote the foreword to Victor Herman's cartoon book Winnie the WAC.
Personal life
In June 1939, director-choreographer Busby Berkeley proposed to Landis, but later broke it off. In 1940 she married yacht broker Willis Hunt Jr., a man she called "sarcastic" and left after two months.[1] Two years later, she met an Army Air Corps captain named Thomas Wallace in London, and married him in a church ceremony; they divorced a couple of years later. Landis wanted to have children but was unable to conceive due to endometriosis.[1]
In 1945, Landis married Broadway producer W. Horace Schmidlapp. By 1948, her career was in decline and her marriage with Schmidlapp was collapsing. She entered into a romance with actor Rex Harrison, who was then married to actress Lilli Palmer.
Death
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.[6][7] She had spent her final night alive with Harrison.
The next afternoon, Harrison and the maid discovered her on the bathroom floor. Harrison waited several hours before he called a doctor and the police.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10] Landis' official web site, which is owned by her family, has questioned the events of Landis' death and the coroner's ruling of suicide.[11]
Carole Landis was 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.[12] Harrison attended with his wife.[1]
Landis has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,[13] at 1765 Vine Street.
^Parish, James Robert (2002). The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More Than 125 American Movie and TV Idols (3 ed.). Contemporary Books. pp. 315. ISBN0-8092-2227-2.
Carole Landis adopted the name "Carole" because of Carole Lombard, who herself was really named Jane Peters. Her spelling of "Carole" seems to have caused some controversy at that time, and PICTURE PLAY refused at first to even spell it that way, finally relenting after a fairly long interval during which other publications had regularly been using that spelling. By the time Carole Landis adopted the name, the once controversial spelling was commonly accepted.
Carole Landis in an early role in a "Three Musketeers" picture with John Wayne, THREE TEXAS STEERS.
ONE MILLION BC with Victor Mature was the picture that made her a star.
TURNABOUT
This movie was based on a Thorne Smith book in which a man and a woman swap bodies, a plot Roach had already used with Charley Chase and Jeanie Roberts in OKAY TOOTS!, 1935.
An early publicity picture.
Autographed photo.
Carole Landis was termed "The Ping Girl" by Roach publicity, a term she was said to reject at the time. Occasionally you come across such explanations as it being derived from "purring". Actually it appears to be then common slang for "making contact" ( the use of the term for sonar during World War II is related to this ) and in romantic terms was meant to be interperted as "Love at first sight".
"Ping"
"The Original Sweater Girl" was another early nickname.
Which doesn't seem to have been used very much in publicity due to censorship disapproval of the term.
Bathing beauty Carole Landis.
The censors didn't seem to mind the bathing beauty pictures, but it was said that there were other problems. Some of the other women in Hollywood were jealous.
In April 1943, upon request, Carole Landis sighed for the troops on the World War II radio program COMMAND PERFORMANCE. Although done on a radio show, the sigh was recorded for posterity by a film camera.
The business about sighing over the radio on COMMAND PERFORMANCE was also reused in the movie FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP, which was based on the real - life tour by Carole Landis, Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair, and Kay Francis in which they entertained the troops overseas.
The "Four Jills in a jeep"
Carole Landis at left, with Mitzi Mayfair, Kay Francis, and Martha Raye. None seemed to be popular with the studios at the time, although wartime audiences loved them.
"Four Jills in a jeep"
Carole Landis at left, with Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair, and Kay Francis.
In addition to the movie, there was a book Carole Landis wrote a book with the same title about their experiences entertaining the troops on the tour.
The movie was based on Mitzi Mayfair's account, according to the historical record.
The "Four Jills" also appeared together on the World War II radio program COMMAND PERFORMANCE. But there would be no more movies teaming them, and no more tours together. Carole Landis did spend a lot of time entertaining the troops during World War II, but not more than any other actress, as has sometimes been said. That distinction belongs to Marlene Dietrich. But Carole Landis was not far behind, and Martha Raye would not only return to entertain the troops later in the war, but would go out again to entertain the troops in Korean and Vietnam.
Two years later, Carole Landis went on a tour with Jack Benny to entertain troops in the south Pacific.
WW2 candid of Carole, Martha Tilton, Jack Benny, and Larry Adler
With Jack Benny and a native.
Carole Landis was outspoken in her opposition to racism. This was another thing that turned certain people against her.
Carole Landis shows them how it's done.
Whatever it is they're doing.
Chow time.
Victory!
War's aftermath.
Although Hollywood made a movie based on their exploits, the "Four Jills" were not really appreciated by Hollywood. They didn't seem to do well in the movies after the war, despite the sacrifices they had made and the hardships they had endured to help our fighting men. Carole Landis contacted Malaria and amoebic dysentery and was never really the same again.
The sad fate of Carole Landis has been covered in a number of books on "Hollywood's Unsolved Mysteries", including the ones by former Hollywood reporter John Austin. I was able to communicate with John Austin myself a number of years ago. Here is an e mail message that he sent me on August 5, 2002 concerning Carole Landis:
"I knew Carole very well toward the end of WWII and her camp shows and, in fact, as a Special Service Officer for the U.S, Army, travelled with her and her troupe through the North African Campaign and, later in Great Britain.
I also saw a lot of her when we both returned to California following WWII and the filming of Four Jills In A Jeep. Unfortunately, Carole had "bad press," aka word of mouth, from a coterie of gossiping Bel Air matrons and was also unfortunate in her choice of men such as the slimy, pompous Englishman Rex Harrison. He led her down the garden path and. eventually, to her death even though she was pregnant with his child.
It was too bad. She was a wonderful person, beautiful, and a good, journeyman actress. I have thought about her a lot her since her death because we had a good time together in London at the end of the war.
Best regards,
John Austin"
The poorly explained death of Carole Landis continues to raise questions to this day. Rumor had it that she had killed herself because she'd gotten pregnant and didn't know what to do, which was the same story that was told about Lupe Velez. But according to the records, Carole Landis was not pregnant and suffered from a medical condition that prevented her from having children.
There was also some doubt as to if she had actually comitted suicide. Some members of her family thought that she was murdered.
Rex Harrison's own testimony made it sound as if she was still alive when he found her and then he did nothing to help her, although the usual version had it that she was already dead when he got there. No one seemed to worry at the time that he had at very least failed to report a death of someone he had professed to love.
She deserved better.
I reccomend Eric Gans' book CAROLE LANDIS: A MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL.
