Veronica Lake

The name of Constance Frances Marie Ockelman will not sound familiar to anyone and that is because a Paramount producer, Arthur Hornblow Jr., artistically baptized her as Veronica Lake, the name with which she would go down in film history. When she was 16 years old, her parents moved to Beverly Hills and she began taking acting classes there. The young woman took very little time to stand out and at only 19 years old she already had important roles in good movies. Her brilliant but fleeting way into the industry would be offset by the resounding downfall she suffered from her, and the sad and lonely end of her life.

Veronica was one of the icons of the 40s. In it she gave us her best performances: Sullivan’s Travels , I Married a Witch and Blood in the Philippines . She excelled in comedy and film noir, two genres that seemed to have been designed for her. She was as beautiful as she was mysterious, as sexy as she was ironic. Her career was a continued success until 1944, the year The Hour Before the Dawn premiered . After this film, she only shone again in 1946 with The Blue Dahlia .

From here his professional and working life would sink forever.

Veronica was self-centered, selfish, and immature. Her quarrels on filming, her whims and her lack of professionalism became famous. She too many flaws to sustain a career in Hollywood. However, she never regretted her way of acting: “I was always rebellious and probably could have gone much further if I had changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I’ve gotten far enough without the change in attitude. I’m happy with that”.

His personal life was a disaster. She had three husbands and none of them lasted more than nine years. She suffered from alcoholism and mental problems. She fell out with her entire family and had no one to support her in her decline.

After breaking her ankle in 1959, she was unable to return to movies and spent several years working as a waitress and living in cheap hotels. Her head couldn’t take it and she was committed to a psychiatric hospital for paranoia. She went out and published the autobiography “Veronica”. She seemed like she was rising, that she was emerging from the well. With the money she earned as a writer, she produced and starred in her last film: Flesh Feast , a low-budget horror film. But three years later, in 1973, she was diagnosed with hepatitis and kidney failure. She was not long in dying. Her body couldn’t take it.

Veronica Lake couldn’t stomach a success that came to her like an unexpected gust of wind. She rose to the pinnacle of success almost without realizing it, boosted by everything around her. But the lights, the cameras, the covers and the events did not like it. She did not want to accept the life of a movie icon: “I never wanted to be a star, I never took it seriously. I couldn’t live, I couldn’t stand it, I hated being something that I really wasn’t.