Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American actress and singer. She 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.\n', 'Landis was born on January 1, 1919, in Fairchild, Wisconsin, the youngest of five children of Clara (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.\n', 'In 1923, Landis\' family moved to San Bernardino, California. Landis\' mother worked menial jobs to support the family. At the age of 15, Landis dropped out of San Bernardino High School and set forth on a career path to show business. She started out as a hula dancer in a San Francisco nightclub, where she was described by her boss as a "nervous $35-a-week blonde doing a pathetic hula at her opening night at the old Royal Hawaiian on Bush [Street]...that\'ll never get anyplace in show business" and apparently who employed her only because he felt sorry for her; she later sang with a dance band. She bleached her hair blonde and changed her name to "Carole Landis" after her favorite actress, Carole Lombard. After saving $100 she moved to Hollywood.\n', '

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