Veronica Lake

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Veronica Lake (* 14. November 1922 as Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn , New York ; † 7. July 1973 in Burlington , Vermont ) was a Hollywood actress.

Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd in Die Scarenhand , wall painting at the former location of Kino 46 in the Walle district of Bremen

Career

Lake, who grew up in poverty, moved with her mother from Miami to Beverly Hills after high school . When she was 16, she attended an acting school there. After a few small roles in the theater, she went to film in the late 1930s and initially played several supporting roles for Paramount .

She had her breakthrough in 1941 as a second supporting actress in I Wanted Wings . The critics didn't like the film or Lake's portrayal of an amoral seductress, but the audience was most fascinated by her hairstyle . Her long blonde hair hung over one eye and the hairstyle became famous under the name peek-a-boo bang . The studio immediately transferred the name to Lake and she was referred to as the peek-a-boo girl afterwards . There was a method; so was Dorothy Lamour , another actress at Paramount, the scantily clad paddled in the studio's own South Seas lagoons that Sarong Girl and Lana Turner , a big breasted sex symbol at MGM who likes to close sweaters, called Sweater wore was simply the Sweater Girl . A special oil was developed in the studio that gave the hair on the canvas a special shine, and Lake was contractually prohibited from smoking and doing other things that could damage the hair. Lake's hairstyle was a sensation and has been copied a million times. After accidents occurred in factories because women workers got their hair into production machines and were scalped, the US government asked Lake to wear a different hairstyle. Curiously, Lake's career came to an end shortly thereafter.

But first she succeeded in 1941 on the side of Alan Ladd with Die Scarshand the rise to star . Both made a few more films together, whereby the two physically rather small actors (Lake measured 1.51 m, Ladd 1.68 m) always competed to move their face as little as possible and to limit their facial expressions to the absolute minimum. Lake had a good role in the 1941 film Sullivan's Travels by Preston Sturges , in which she played alongside Joel McCrea . A year later she worked with Fredric March in the René Clair comedy Meine Frau, die Hexe as the eponymous witch. Lake appeared in the 1943 propaganda revue Star Spangled Rhythm , in which she sang the song A Sweater, a Sarong and a Peek-A-Boo on the side of Dorothy Lamour and Paulette Goddard . That same year she had one of her best roles in Brave Women, alongside Claudette Colbert and again Paulette Goddard. The drama about nurses who are trapped by the Japanese in Bataan and suffer a terrible fate was one of the first Hollywood productions to depict the everyday life of women in the army. British films had been full of women in uniform for years.

After 1944, Lake's career quickly came to an end. She was extremely unpopular with her colleagues. Eddie Bracken , with whom she made several films, still called her The Bitch decades later . Allegedly, mental health problems were the reason for Lake's behavior. She was also a heavy alcoholic since the 1940s .

She appeared in a number of television series during the first half of the 1950s and then fell into disuse. In the early 1960s she worked as a bartender in a hotel. In 1966 and 1970 Lake made two more films. Her last film, which she also served as a producer, was the horror film Flesh Feast .

Private life

Veronica Lake has had numerous affairs with celebrities such as Howard Hughes and Aristotle Onassis . In addition, she was married four times, u. a. first marriage to John S. Detlie and second marriage to director André De Toth .

She died on July 7, 1973 at the age of 50 of acute hepatitis and acute kidney failure , a result of decades of alcoholism . Her body was cremated and scattered off the coast of Florida.

Others

In 1997 she was indirectly portrayed by Kim Basinger in the film LA Confidential . Basinger played the prostitute Lynn Bracken, who marketed her physical similarity to Veronica Lake. Basinger received an Oscar for best supporting actress for the role .

Filmography

  • 1939: Sorority House
  • 1939: The Wrong Room
  • 1939: Dancing Co-Ed
  • 1939: All Women Have Secrets
  • 1940: Young as You Feel
  • 1940: Forty Little Mothers
  • 1941: I Wanted Wings
  • 1941: The Golden Gate (Hold Back the Dawn)
  • 1941: Sullivan's Travels (Sullivan's Travels)
  • 1942: Die Scarhand (This Gun for Hire)
  • 1942: The Glass Key (The Glass Key)
  • 1942: My Wife, the Witch (I Married a Witch)
  • 1942: Star Spangled Rhythm
  • 1943: Courageous Women (So ​​Proudly We Hail!)
  • 1944: The Hour Before the Dawn
  • 1945: Bring on the Girls
  • 1945: Out of This World
  • 1945: The Thief and the Blonde (Hold That Blonde)
  • 1946: Miss Susie Slagle's
  • 1946: The Blue Dahlia (The Blue Dahlia)
  • 1947: Girls for Hollywood (Variety Girl)
  • 1947: The Farm of the Haunted (Ramrod)
  • 1948: Smugglers from Saigon (Saigon)
  • 1948: The Sainted Sisters
  • 1948: Isn't It Romantic?
  • 1949: Slattery's Hurricane
  • 1951: Stronghold
  • 1966: Footsteps in the Snow
  • 1970: Flesh Feast

literature

  • Veronika Lake, Donald Bain : Veronica - The Autobiography of Veronica Lake. Bantam Books, New York 1972.
  • Jeff Lenburg: Peekaboo - The Story of Veronica Lake. iUniverse, Indiana 2001, ISBN 0-595-19239-4 .
  • Brenda J Mills: Veronica Lake: A Photo Gallery: The Peekaboo Blonde. CreateSpace, 2008, ISBN 1-4404-0969-2 .

Web links

Commons : Veronica Lake  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Notes and sources

  1. ↑ In many sources 1919 is given as the year of birth; However, in the records of the US census of April 1, 1930 (State of New York, County of Kings, district 1657, page 8-B, family 151) there is an indication that Constance Ockelman, born in Brooklyn, was at that time was seven years old
  2. ↑ Veronica Lake's Ashes For Sale? In: CBSNews.com. October 12, 2004, accessed February 2, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Lake, Veronica
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ockelman, Constance Frances Marie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION american actress
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York
DATE OF DEATH 7th July 1973
Place of death Burlington , Vermont