Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American film and stage actress, 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. Landis was known as "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest" because of her curvy figure.
Landis committed suicide on July 5, 1948, at the age of 29.
Carole Landis was born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste on January 1, 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin. She was the youngest of five children (two of whom died in childhood) born to Clara Ridste (née Stentek), a Polish farmer's daughter, and Norwegian-American Alfred Ridste, a "drifting railroad mechanic" who abandoned the family after Landis' birth. According to Landis' 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' mother in April 1921 and remarried a few months later.