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Chiefly known as a
B film actress who later played a few supporting roles in A pictures at
Fox, Carole Landis (1919-1948) appeared in over fifty films. Almost half
of these were uncredited before she achieved some recognition in One
Million B.C. (Hal Roach, 1940), in which she and her co-star Victor
Mature were both cast by D.W. Griffith (who filmed her screen test). She
would work again with Mature at Fox in I Wake Up Screaming (a 1941
noir, also co-starring Betty Grable and Laird Cregar) and My Gal Sal
(a musical biopic of 1942, also co-starring Rita Hayworth, in which Mature
plays Paul Dresser – the popular 1890s composer and older brother of Theodore
Dreiser, who started out working in a carnival). A feminist since her
youth who tried to start a girls football team at her Wisconsin high school,
Landis was born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste, and chose her first name
because of her admiration for Carole Lombard. In 1944, she published Four
Jills in a Jeep – a book about her first wartime USO tour, entertaining
troops in England and North Africa – and appeared as herself in the Fox
film derived from it. Some of her other better-known films, all cited
in the following poem, include Turnabout (1940), Topper Returns
(1941), Moon Over Miami (1941), It Happened in Flatbush
(1942), Orchestra Wives (1942), and It Shouldn’t Happen to a
Dog (1948). (Uncited but also notable is her role in Douglas
Sirk’s 1946 A Scandal in Paris.) She died a suicide from an overdose
of Seconal, and her body was discovered by Rex Harrison.
- Jonathan Rosenbaum
I
You entertained
In some negligible
Night spot:
Victor Mature
Struck, perhaps,
by
Some glimpse
of
That abiding
tautness,
Wagered:
He could transmute
The Jenesaisquoi
So his Avon
paperbackbred mind
Doubtless formalised
it
Into stardom;
and so
To a sufficiency
For any girl
of spirit
He did; bypassing,
however,
That defiant
native savvy of yours:
Which
Like an elderly
Embarrassing
Nagging relative
Kept whining:
Where’s the map?
And:
Have you for
sure
Checked your
carfare?
In other words,
Centrifugal panic;
Attempting to
evade which,
You fled
Into dissolution:
The permanent
comfort station;
And,
Your independence
raging,
Viciousness;
Which earned
you murder.
Laird Cregar:
Your self-elected
Regrettably belated
protector,
Was on the right
track
But in the wrong
calling.
He should
In a way, was
A judge:
Misplanted
Rather like his
Dead Lady
In the calling
Of detective
He judged rightly
As far as it
went;
But, alas;
Perceived God
As insufficient
audience
For his truth.
Himself, awash
In cheap romance
He affected to join
His lady: liebestod
While Victor
The guide to
false Maturity
Wound up
In more senses
We might assume
Than one
With Carole’s
sister Blonde:
The plump
Comforting
Betty Grable:
Carole’s partnerblonde
In Moon Over
Miami;
Betty’s plump
cheeriness
Countered somewhat
By the glimmer
Of reality confronted
That played
Like a more or
less
Benign erosion
Over Carole’s
face
Noticeably lengthening:
The ivory visor
Of her strong
grin
Confronting
Not quite defying
Rejection? Abandonment?
Yet, not on her
own account
Merely:
The smile
Of the Big Sister:
The sisterhood
Of Blondell
Of Stanwyck
Of Sheridan.
Women
Aged
In an era
Of early aging.
She possessed
however
A jocose mischief
Maybe, bawdry?
That the studios
Tried to cultivate
In knockabout
farces:
Costarring with
Blondell
And Roland Young
In Topper
Returns:
A watering down
Of Thorne Smith’s
Bawdy spookfests
Likewise,
Smith’s Turnabout:
Where she pretended
to
House her husband’s
psyche:
Talking from
her belly
And shinnying
Up a flagpole.
Tomboy Big Sister!
Freeforalling
In Orchestra
Wives:
Getting her backside
kicked
By Anne Rutherford.
II
It prepared her
derrière
No doubt
For jouncing
In a jeep –
Though
It was hardly
A mere joke;
In World War
Two
Landis
With three other
actresses
Entertained GIs
At the front;
While
On the radio
show
Duffy’s Tavern,
Abe Burrows’
Sandpaper sarcasm
Empowered Landis
In mocking the
males
Who jeered
At female
Participation.
Though, it would
seem,
Rejection
Punctuated
her career.
III
One recalls:
As a honky tonk
Caravan owner,
Landis
Discovered Victor
Mature
On her then present
Doorstep;
Where
Urged, perhaps,
By racial memory
Of how they confronted
Anachronistic
dinosaurs
In One Million
B.C.
Showperson
Landis
Looked askance
At her caller’s
Tar and feather
suit;
And
Moved, perhaps
Prematurely
By the Four Jills
spirit
Admitted him
to her caravan
And
Replaced
His medicine
show legacy
With
A snappy
Checkerboard
outfit;
In which
He regaled her
audiences
With his doublehanded
Pianistic virtuosity;
That is,
Until Rita Hayworth,
Sophisticated
chanteuse
From Manhattan,
Hooted
At his callow
showiness.
Whereupon
(in due course)
he disencumbered
himself
of Landis Productions;
which he now
he said
recognised
as cheap and
flashy.
Thus
Affecting successful
transition
From flashy dresser
To Paul Dresser:
Having dropped
No doubt
For smoother
pronunciation
The inconvenient
I;
Having, perhaps,
An adequate supply.
While Carole went onward
And
Probably unobtrusively
Downward
In B Minus flicks:
It Happened
in Flatbush;
It Shouldn’t
Happen to a Dog;
With ageing studio
standbys:
Lloyd Nolan
Cesar Romero
Allyn Joslyn:
Steadfast rough
and tunmble;
Until whatever
appeared
Indefinitely
endurable
In resources
Or challenges
Ceased to be:
There
on the kitchen floor.
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