Veronica Lake

Trivia of Veronica Lake (14 November 1922 – 7 July 1973)

*She hated her stage name "Veronica Lake".Her birth name was Constance Frances Marie Ockelman.But her producer Hornblow suggested she use the name “Veronica Lake.” Besides, Hornblow explained, her eyes were also “calm and clear like a blue lake,” so it fit perfectly.Lake herself hated it, and for a heartbreaking reason. As it happened, “Veronica” was her mother’s real name, and Lake wanted nothing more than to be free of her domineering parent. According to the star, when she heard that was her new stage name, “I just sat down and cried.” But before she could speak up, it was way too late

*In I Wanted Wings (1941), one scene turned Veronica Lake into a household name. During one day of the shoot, Lake’s hair kept accidentally falling into one of her eyes, creating a “peek-a-boo” draping effect. Although the self-conscious actress thought “I had ruined my chances for the role,” her producer Arthur Hornblow, as always, understood the star-power in front of him, and encouraged her to keep doing it. What followed was a sensation.During World War Two, the rage for her peek-a-boo bangs became a hazard when women in the defense industry would get their bangs caught in machinery. Lake had to take a publicity picture in which she reacted painfully to her hair getting "caught" in a drill press in order to heighten public awareness about the hazard of her hairstyle.

*Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake did not get along during filming Sullivan's Travel (1941). McCrea subsequently turned down the lead role in I Married a Witch (1942) because he did not want to work with Lake again. They did, however, appear together later in Ramrod (1947).

*Lake was attracted to other oddballs like herself. With her clear eye for the absurd, she adored the “handsome devil” Errol Flynn, and the equally hard-drinking Gary Cooper who she lovingly recalls often spotting slumped asleep in the saddle on Sunday morning horse rides in the Valley.His co-star in I Married A Witch (1942), Fredric March had reportedly said Lake was "a brainless little blonde sexpot, void of any acting ability".

*When former lover Marlon Brando read in a newspaper that a reporter had found Veronica Lake working as a cocktail waitress in a Manhattan bar, he instructed his accountant to send her a check for a thousand dollars. Out of pride, she never cashed it, but kept it framed in her Miami living room to show her friends.

*When her film career came to an end, Lake turned to live theatre and for many years appeared in touring companies of such plays as Voice of the Turtle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Peter Pan, in which she played the title role.

*Her ashes sat on a funeral home's shelf until 1976, when her cremation was paid for, and supposedly spread on the Florida coastline. Some 30 years after her death, her ashes resurfaced in a New York antique store in October 2004.