|
Filmography
-
Flesh Feast (1970)
-
Stronghold (1951)
-
Slattery's Hurricane (1949)
-
Ramrod (1947)
-
Variety Girl (1947)
-
The Blue Dahlia (1946)
- Joyce Harwood
-
So Proudly We Hail (1943)
-
I Married a Witch (1942)
-
Sullivan's Travels (1942)
- The Girl
-
The Glass Key (1942)
-
The Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
Biography
When Brooklyn-born Constance Ockleman was prodded into a performing
career by her ambitious mother, she chose her stepfather's name, Keane,
for her nom de stage. After a year of thankless bit parts, she
was dropped by RKO Radio Pictures. When she re-emerged at MGM in a small
role in the Eddie
Cantor vehicle Forty
Little Mothers (1940), she was known as Veronica Lake. While posing
for publicity pictures, Lake inadvertently allowed her blonde hair to
obscure one eye, thereby creating her movie persona as "the girl with
the peek-a-boo bang." Signed by Paramount in 1941, Lake quickly ascended
to leading roles. Directors such as Preston
Sturges and René
Clair had the patience to draw genuine performances from her, but,
for the most part, she was cast on the basis of her beauty and
popularity, with acting hardly an afterthought. In This Gun
for Hire (1942), Lake was teamed with up-and-coming Alan Ladd,
thereby launching one of Paramount's most successful screen duos.
Eventually renegotiating her contact and finding brief domestic
happiness with her second husband, director André
De Toth, the actress flourished professionally and financially
until 1948, when she was hit with the double whammy of being dropped by
Paramount and being sued for support payments by her mother. De
Toth wangled a good role for Lake in the 20th Century Fox film Slattery's
Hurricane (1949), but it failed to rekindle her stardom. She left
Hollywood in the early '50s, making a living with stage appearances. But
increasing personal problems and a stage injury effectively ended her
career, and, by 1959, she was working as a Manhattan barmaid. Lake
staged a comeback as a Baltimore TV host in the early '60s, and, in 1966
and 1970, financed two cheap films for herself (Footsteps
in the Snow and Flesh Feast).
She wrote a tell-all autobiography in 1969 and sought stage work in
England. Lake returned to the U.S. in 1971; but after more personal
problems and failed comeback attempts, she died of hepatitis two years
later while visiting friends in Burlington, VT. ~ Hal Erickson, All
Movie Guide
|
