Early Years
Born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York on November 14, 1922, Veronica Lake came from a modest, working-class family. At the age of 9, her father Harry was killed in an explosion while working on a ship off the shore of Philadelphia. Subsequently, her mother, Constance, remarried in 1938.
The family soon moved to Saranac, New York. Not long after the move, Lake who was a troublemaker was sent to the Villa Maria boarding school in Montreal, Quebec. She was promptly expelled for her behavioral problems. Not long after this occurred, Lake and her family moved to Miami, Florida. Eventually, they headed West wherein 1938, they settled in Los Angeles.
Early Roles
Once the family settled in, Lake began to attend the Bliss-Hayden School of acting in Beverly Hills. During this time, Lake was using her first name Constance, as well as the last name of her step-father Keane. She befriended a girl named Gwen Horn at the school and the pair would go on auditions at RKO Pictures.
In 1939, Lake made her first appearance on screen as a coed in the movie Sorority House. Her small part ended up on the cutting room floor. Next, she appeared in All Women Have Secrets and Dancing Co-Ed, both released in 1939. Additionally, that same year, Lake appeared in the play Thought For Food for which she received favorable press in the Los Angeles Times for her performance.
In 1940, Lake was noticed by assistant director Fred Wilcox, who subsequently shot a screen test for her. When this test was shown to producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. she was cast in the Paramount movie I Wanted Wings (1941) as a nightclub singer. The producer also changed her name to Veronica Lake. Additionally, this movie also created, albeit accidentally, Lake’s trademark peek-a-boo hairstyle.
“I was playing a sympathetic drunk, I had my arm on the table…it slipped…and my hair…fell over my face. It became my trademark and purely by accident.”
– Veronica Lake
I Wanted Wings was a huge hit and Lake became a big star. Further, her hairstyle was soon being copied by women across the country. Lake was just 18 years old.
Movies, Marriages, and Career Decline
In 1940, Lake married art director John S Detlie. They would go on to have two children, a daughter, Elaine in 1941 and a son, Anthony, in 1943. Anthony was born prematurely and passed away a few weeks later. Subsequently, the couple divorced in December of that year.
Lake’s career was doing extremely well. The actress rattled off a string of hit movies such as Sullivan’s Travels (1941), This Gun for Hire and I Married a Witch, both released in 1942. As a result, at the start of 1943, Lake was flying high. The actress was making $4,500 a week at Paramount. This would be the peak for Lake who through a series of self-inflicted wounds would see her career falter. Subsequently, the actress would fall into obscurity.
Lake’s first mistake came when she did a PSA for the U.S. Government called “Safety Styles” that illustrated suitable ladies’ hairstyles for factory work. This change was not well received by the fickle public of the day. The ramifications would be felt in the next year.
Lake’s other big mistake that year was to begin to drink heavily at all hours of the day. She was belligerent and rude to people on set and eventually, people refused to work with her. Lake made a movie called The Hour Before The Dawn (1944), in which she played a Nazi spy. The film did poorly at the box office and her German accent was terrible. So were the reviews and box office.
That same year also had Veronica Lake entering into her second marriage. This time to Andre DeToth, a Hungarian-American film director. From this marriage, Lake would bear an additional two children: a son, Michael, and a daughter Diana.
In June 1944, Lake went to Boston for the war effort where her services as a dishwasher were auctioned off. Further, Lake’s behavior was so extremely poor during this event, that when Paramount got wind of it, she was given a lesser role in her next feature, Out Of This World, released in 1945.
Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote:
“Lake clipped her own wings in her Boston bond appearance…It’s lucky for Lake, after Boston, that she isn’t out of pictures”
Over the next 4 years, Lake would appear in several movies. These included a hit with Alan Ladd The Blue Dhalia (1946), and several flops like Variety Girl (1947) and Saigon (1948). During the making of these movies, she was often referred to as Moronica Lake or simply “The Bitch” by the cast and crew behind her back. Her heavy drinking and random pattern of abruptly leaving the set were the main contributors to these opinions. In 1948, Paramount decided to not renew her contract.
“She was known as ‘The Bitch’ and she deserved the title.”
– Eddie Bracken
Lake would go on to make a few more duds including Slattery’s Hurricane (1949) at 20th Century Fox. By 1951, the actress was broke and essentially out of the movie business. When the IRS seized her home for unpaid taxes, she ran away to New York, ditching her husband and family in the process. Lake and DeToth would officially divorce in 1952.
Later Years
Lake did some theatre work in England, then some work in New York in the 1950s, until falling completely into obscurity. In 1962, the actress was noticed by a New York Post reporter who found her living at the exclusively women’s Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan. Veronica Lake was working as a waitress downstairs in the cocktail lounge under the name “Connie DeToth”. Lake later said of the job:
“I like people…I like to talk to them. I’ve really enjoyed the job…I seem to have found peace. Spare me the high pressures of success. I’ve been there.”
In 1969, Lake returned to Hollywood for her Hollywood Star Ceremony on the Walk of Fame. Although she was only 47 years old, she looked two decades older. While in Los Angeles the actress met Sue Cameron, who would eventually be a columnist for the Hollywood Reporter.
Cameron recalled:
“My picture of her was this gorgeous screen siren with the beautiful blonde hair covering one eye. But there sat a woman who looked like a cleaning lady. I was really startled. I instantly knew here was someone…who was probably struggling financially. You could see she was very damaged…That day she was getting a star on the Walk of Fame. she asked me to go with her. I said, ‘Of course.’ I had no idea there wouldn’t be anybody there. There was not one person there.”
“Today, there are busloads of people that show up — it’s insane. And here was one of the most extraordinary movie stars of the ‘40s…standing alone on Hollywood Boulevard with me and Gary Owens from ‘Laugh-In’ and her star sitting there.”
“There was no microphone. There was nothing. It was just three people…I was devastated for her. Just devastated…It was really a stunning experience. I could see that she recognized what was happening.”
“She put on a brave face. She tried to smile through it. But you could see that she was just trying to get through it…to get it over with…she couldn’t wait to leave…She would have been better off staying where she was. She looked very haggard…like she had been a drunk for years. But she wasn’t drinking that day. It’s possible, and this is just speculation, that she was sober.”
“And wherever she was living, she might have felt safe. But then she went off and dipped her toe again in Hollywood and got screwed over once again with nobody there. I’ve been to so many star unveilings. Hers was really the only one where there were just no people…it was strange.”
Lake’s autobiography was also published in 1969. She went on Dick Cavett’s show to promote it in 1971 and was drunk at the time. In 1970, she co-produced and starred in Flesh Feast a sub-standard B-movie where her character kills Hitler by dumping some flesh-eating maggots on his head. This was her last role.
In 1973, Veronica Lake died of Hepatitis at the age of 50. Her ashes would go unclaimed for three years. They were later discovered years later in a New York City Pawn Shop in 2004 for the price of $200.
