Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl

Acknowledgments

Many people have been of great help to me in writing this book. Among those whom I especially thank for their contribution are the following: First, my wife, Stacey, whose patience and support throughout this project make her a fitting candidate for sainthood; Walt Ross, Carole’s nephew, who generously gave me access to family materials and permitted me to use what I needed for this book; Gwen Serna, who has shared with me her time and collections and whose sweetness and generosity make her Carole’s true disciple as well as her most loyal fan; Laura Wagner, who unselfishly provided valuable leads about Carole and invaluable publication assistance; Ned Comstock of the USC Cinema-Television Library, who was unfailingly helpful during my many hours poring through USC’s remarkable collection of old movie magazines and memorabilia. Among the members of Carole’s family with whom I have been privileged to come in contact, I am grateful to Carole’s niece Lyn Saye and her husband , Henry, for much valuable information, including a copy of the memorial issue of Carole’s fan magazine; to Carole’s second cousin Diane Ledo Madir for much useful material about the family tree; to Carole’s niece and nephew Sharon Ross Powell and Billy Ross for meeting with me in Utah; to Carole’s nephew Bryan Ridste; and to Sharon’s daughter Tammy for our conversation in 2003. Among the many Hollywood personalities who generously responded to my request for information about Carole, I should first mention those ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix who are no longer with us: Kurt Kreuger and Fayard Nicholas, who provided particularly valuable memories of Carole, as well as Vivian Austin, Oleg Cassini, June Haver, Frances Langford, and Martha Tilton. Special thanks to Jean Porter Dmytryk for inviting me into her home and telling me about Carole before stardom, to Olivia de Havilland for graciously writing from Paris, to Jane Withers for our dinner conversation, to Betty Garrett, June Lockhart, Tony Martin, and Martha Stewart for providing material for the book, as well as to David Brown, Kay Linaker Phillips, Cobina Wright Jr., and Richard Zanuck. I am also grateful for the useful information supplied by Robert Dahdah and Ken Richards, who worked with Carole in New York. My grateful thanks go to those who met Carole during the war and their heirs, a number of whom were kind enough to send me photographs and other materials. Among these I particularly want to thank Philip Castanza, Ace Elliott, Merrill Hilton, Barry Kazmer, Mary Koji, Frank Packlick, Jim Salley, Steve Sarbaugh, Nancy Skrocki, James H. Smith, Robert Stava, and Col. Eugene Wallace. Among the many fellow researchers who provided advice and assistance , James Robert Parish, the dean of Hollywood film writers, was consistently helpful and supportive, and Aubrey Solomon kindly provided me with Fox box office data. Thanks to Bryan Cooper for his friendly and generous assistance at Fox and in Hollywood; to Valerie Yaros for Carole’s Screen Guild records and her own Wupperman stories; to Denny Miller for our companionable travels to San Bernardino and his information on Carole’s auto racing connections; to Bob Hudson, who put me in touch with Carole’s family in Provo; to Bobby Gulshan, who assisted me at the start of this project; to Phil Weiss for generously sharing his Pattarini notes; and to Paul Georges for his detective work on my behalf. Thanks are due as well to Patrick Agan, Larry Billman, Lisa Burks, Adrienne Childers, Noonie Fortin, Stan Goodrich, Ray Hagen, Marlys Harris, Lynn Kear, Scott O’Brien, Karine Philippot, and Stephen Silverman for sharing research findings and Hollywood knowledge. And thanks to Gary Hamann of Filming Today Press for solving the Blood and Sand mystery and for many other scoops from the Los Angeles news media. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am also grateful to the librarians who provided me with invaluable assistance, particularly to Barbara Hall at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Herrick Library; Julie Graham and Lauren Buisson at UCLA Fine Arts Special Collections; and Haden Guest, curator of the USC Warner Brothers archives. Finally, thanks to my fellow Carole fans: to Bill Gerdts for our email exchanges about Carole’s and other films of the past; to Jerry Diekmann for caring for Carole’s grave; to my old friend and Carole admirer Stephen Werner; to Kathlene Avakian, Jeff Bissanti, Gerard Dessere, Kevin Dodge, Rodger...