Background
Veronica Lake was born on 14 November 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. Lake was the daughter of a German-Danish seaman.
Veronica Lake was born on 14 November 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. Lake was the daughter of a German-Danish seaman.
After beauty contests and drama school, she was taken on bv RKO—as Constance Keane— made her debut in John Farrows Sorority House (39), and struggled against mass femininity in All Women Have Secrets (39, Kurt Neumann) and Forty Little Mothers (40. Busby Berkeley). Her name changed, she was put under contract by Paramount after Mitchell Leisen’s / Wanted Wings (41), and then established herself in four striking films: Sullivan’s Travels (41, Preston Sturges); This Gun for Hire (42, Frank Tuttle) and The Glass Key (42, Stuart Heisler), both opposite Alan Ladd; and / Married a Witch (42. Rene Clair).
Petite, silky , and lurking behind the half curtain of her own blonde hair, she was a face in the dreams of American soldiers. But her hairstyle was so imitated by their girlfriends bending over factor)' machines that the government asked for her hair to be pulled back for the part of a military nurse in Mark Sandrichs So Proudly We Hail (43). She next played a Nazi spy in The Hour Before the Dawn (44, Tuttle)—a hint perhaps that her star was waning, made explicit when Paramount put her opposite the declining Eddie Bracken in three movies.
She made more films with Ladd—Duffy’s Tavern (45, Hal Walker), The Blue Dahlia (46, George Marshall), and Saigon (48, Lesley Fenton)—but her fame did not really surxive the war and the prohibition on her looks. She made Miss Susie Slagle’s (46, John Bern ) and two films for her second husband, Andre de Toth—Ramrod (47) and Slattery’s Hurricane (49)—but after Stronghold (51. Steve Sekely) she filed for bankruptcy. She went first into the theatre and was rediscovered by the press as a waitress in Manhat¬tan. Her comebacks never took, least of all two more movies, Footsteps in the Snow (66, Martin Green) and Flesh Feast (70, B. F. Grinter), partly because she was hardly recognizable as the dry, satin, delectable moll on Ladd's arm—two tinv people in their own world.