Veronica Lake: The Girl With the Peek-a-boo Bang

The year of her marriage, Connie got another chance at a screen test when Arthur Hornblow Jr. started casting for I Wanted Wings. This time the test went well; Connie won a small part as a barroom singer. Hornblow also gave Connie her new name. While "Veronica Lake" didn't appeal to her at first, she ended up using it legally for the rest of her life.

Veronica's performance in I Wanted Wings instantly made her a star. Her thin and unruly hair, which annoyed Veronica by constantly falling over her eye, was suddenly the center of her allure. She became known as the "Girl with the Peek-a-boo bang" and comedians from Groucho Marx to Abbott and Costello joked about her one-eyed appearance. Incidentally, she also received good acting reviews from the critics, a fact that held much less weight with studio executives.

For the next two years, Veronica enjoyed career success that she never matched again. She showed her comic talents in Sullivan's Travels and I Married a Witch. She put her hair under a cap and proved she could draw attention without it in the patriotic So Proudly We Hail. She also started a partnership that would become one of the most famous in Hollywood history.

Veronica paired with Alan Ladd for the first time in This Gun For Hire. They created an immediate sensation and went on to make a total of seven films together, the most significant being the The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia. Ladd was of short stature for a leading man and Veronica's 5'2" height put him at ease. Though they were never friends, the pair enjoyed a cool and pleasant professional relationship.

In the midst of her success, Veronica also gave birth to her first child, Elaine. She had been happy when she became pregnant, but when Elaine was born, she became indifferent to and uninvolved with her new baby. This is only one of the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia that Veronica began to show with alarming frequency.

Coming up in part II: Veronica leaves Hollywood for New York and television.

Veronica Lake Links

Thanks to www.silverscreensirens.com for permission to use the beautiful photograph of Veronica.

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