A doomed affair: Rex Harrison and Carole Landis
Sex. Suicide. Scandal. Chris Hallam looks at the tragic end of the relationship between Hollywood stars Rex Harrison and Carole Landis…
On July 5, 1948, the maid employed by Hollywood actress Carole Landis became aware there was a man in the house. It was not a total shock. She knew him, it was the actor Rex Harrison. But he had entered discreetly through the back way and had apparently already been to see Carole in her room. He appeared to be in a daze and asked the maid if she had been to Miss Landis’s room yet. She hadn’t. What came next was a shock. “Well,” Rex said quietly. “I think she’s dead.”
UNFAITHFULLY HIS
Rex had met Carole Landis the year before in 1947. They had started an affair almost immediately. She was beautiful, 28 and in the final stages of her fourth marriage. Harrison was 39 and still very much married to his second wife, actress Lilli Palmer. They had one young son, Carey and another son Noel, from Rex’s first marriage. Though he had recently appeared in The Rake’s Progress and The Ghost and Mrs Muir, it is probably fair to say his wife’s career was at that point going better than his and Harrison had started drinking heavily.
Hearing that Carole had been contracted to work in England for the best part of six months, Rex pushed his producer to get him to do a film in Britain too so they could continue their affair. On their return to Hollywood, in March 1948, their dalliance became public after it was revealed in a gossip column. Lilli temporarily left Rex. She would eventually return.
On July 4, 1948, Rex spent two hours eating dinner and talking at Carole’s home before taking off that evening. It was a public holiday and the maid was off, so we do not know exactly what happened. However, it seems likely Rex ended the affair there. To Carole, born to a broken home and now with diminishing finances and with four marriages and a failing career behind her, this seems to have been the final straw.
THE MORNING AFTER
The following day Rex and the maid went to Carole’s room where she was lying on the floor. He ripped open and read the touching note, clearly addressed to her mother. “Oh no, my darling. Why did you do it?” the maid later reported him as saying.
“I felt her pulse,” he later said. “It must have been partly my imagination, but I thought there was a little beat”. If this is so, Rex’s actions after this were inexcusable. He wasted valuable time searching for and then flicking through Carole’s address book before suddenly leaving and driving off. He had not called any paramedics, police or the coroner’s office. Carole’s astonished and horrified maid was forced to tell a neighbour in a nearby swimming pool, who raised the alarm himself.
Carole had died after taking an overdose of Seconal.
As the scandal blew up, Rex desperately tried to distance himself from the affair which was already common knowledge. He told newsmen: “I had dinner with Miss Landis who was strictly a good friend on Sunday night… I cannot understand why she did it. We were good friends.” Later, he lost his temper when they reacted sceptically to his claims to have discussed nothing but her career during his final two hours with Carole. “Was Carole Landis in love with you?” one asked. “Absolutely not!” he asserted. He was lying. However, against all odds, Rex Harrison survived the scandal. He was helped by revelations that Carole had suffered from depression and suicide attempts in the past. It was also confirmed that she had almost certainly been dead for some time when Rex found her. Rumours about a second suicide note remained unresolved. Astonishingly, Rex attended the funeral with his wife Lilli Palmer. They were still together. For now.
THE AFTERMATH
It is impossible to say to what extent Rex Harrison may be held responsible for Carole Landis’s death. We only know that he was the last person to see her alive. However, we do know how Harrison acted immediately after Carole’s body was found. It is also interesting to note that in 1980, more than 30 years later, Harrison’s fourth, and by then ex-wife, Rachel Roberts, also committed suicide, dying shortly after attempting to rekindle their relationship. The attempt at reconciliation had failed: Rex did not want to leave his sixth and final wife, Mercia Tinker.
The Carole Landis affair damaged Rex Harrison’s career for a period of time, but it soon recovered. He and Lilli Palmer divorced in 1957. By the Sixties, he was appearing in the films we best remember him for, talking his way through the songs in My Fair Lady and Doctor Dolittle.
In 1989, one year before his death aged 82, he was knighted. It was the kind of life Carole Landis would never see.