Known as Carole Landis, she won a studio contract with Warner Brothers but was a bit player for the most part in films such as A Star Is Born (1937), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Emperor’s Candlesticks (1937). The following year started much the same way, with more bit roles. By 1939, she was getting a few speaking roles, although mostly one-liners, and that year ended much like the previous two years, with more bit roles; also, she and Wheeler were divorced.
In 1939, she was cast as Loana in the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. (1940); she finally got noticed (the skimpy outfit helped), and her career began moving. She started getting parts in B pictures but didn’t star in big productions — although she had talent, the excellent roles were given to the established stars of the day.
Her busiest year was 1942, with roles in Manila Calling (1942), The Powers Girl (1943), A Gentleman at Heart (1942), and three other movies. Unfortunately, critics took little notice of her films, and when they did, reviewers tended to focus on her breathtaking beauty. By 1947, Carole’s career was beginning to short-circuit. Her contract with 20th Century-Fox had been canceled, her marriages to Willis Hunt Jr. and Thomas Wallace had ended, and her current marriage to Horace Schmidlapp was in trouble; all of that, along with health issues, foretold disaster for her professionally and personally.
Her final two films, Brass Monkey (1948) and The Silk Noose (1948), were released in 1948. On July 5, 1948, Carole committed suicide by taking an overdose of Seconal in her Brentwood Heights, California, home. She was only 29 and had made 49 pictures, most of which were forgettable. If Hollywood moguls had given Carole a chance, she could have been one of the brightest stars in its history.
