There Is More To The Tragic Story of Why Famed Actress/Singer Carole Landis Suffered Suicide

Photo byPinterest.com

You Must Remember This

Film historian Karina Longworth’s classic Hollywood podcast, You Must Remember This, has gained a loyal following over the years. As Longworth once explained, she titled the show as such because “I was thinking about our collective memory.”

“As a culture,” Longworth continued to relay, “…we can remember certain things about somebody like Marilyn Monroe, but all the details get lost. I wanted to take these myths and these ideas we have about the past of Hollywood and bring in the extra detail that makes it feel more real.”

The Landis Approach

Actress/singer Carole Landis, who committed suicide on July 5, 1948, was someone Karina Longworth did not know that much about. As she once observed, Longworth had read an obituary of Landis in Time magazine, and “found it very strange.”

“It was very transparent about the fact that this actress killed herself because [actor] Rex Harrison wouldn’t leave his wife for her,” Longworth said, “…and I just couldn’t believe Time would publish that in 1947.”

Deeper Into the Story

Upon some deep research about Carole Landis, however, Karina Longworth learned there was more to the performer’s life story than was previously revealed.

“The work she did was really interesting,” Longworth said, “…and the struggles she had were unique to her. Then, right in the middle of her career, she has this two-year stretch where she’s going on these U.S.O. tours, and her diary from that time is turned into a book and a movie [1944’s Four Jills in a Jeep].”

In Conclusion

“Landis’s life had been flattened down into a single sentence by Time,” Karina Longworth concluded, “…but her career was actually vibrant and nuanced in a way not enough people remember.”