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Veronica Lake (November 14, 1922^[1] – July 7, 1973) was an American film actress and pin-up model who enjoyed both popular and critical acclaim, most notably for her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s, as well as her peek-a-boo hairstyle.

Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Harry E. Ockelman, of Danish-Irish descent,^[2] worked for an oil company onboard a ship. When she was about one year old, the family moved to Florida but returned to Seattle before she was five. Her father died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia in 1932 when she was 9. Her mother, née Constance Charlotta Trimble (1902-1992), ^[3](listed as "Veronica F." on the 1920 census), married family friend Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, a year later, and his step-daughter began using his last name.

"Connie" (as she was known) was sent to Villa Maria, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, Canada, which she hated and from which she was expelled. The Keane family later moved to Miami, Florida, where Connie attended high school in Miami, where she was known for her beauty. She had a troubled childhood and was, according to her mother, diagnosed as schizophrenic.^[4]

In 1938, Keane moved with her mother and stepfather to Beverly Hills, where her mother enrolled her in the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting. Her first appearance on screen was for RKO, playing a small role among several coeds in the 1939 film, Sorority House. Similar roles followed, including All Women Have Secrets and Dancing Co-Ed. During the making of Sorority House, director John Farrow first noticed how her hair always covered her right eye, creating an air of mystery about her and enhancing her natural beauty. She was then introduced to the Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. He changed her name to Veronica Lake because the surname suited her blue eyes. She was still a teenager.

Her contract was subsequently dropped by RKO. She married art director John S. Detlie, 14 years her senior, in 1940. A small role in the comedy, Forty Little Mothers, brought unexpected attention. In 1941 she was signed to a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures. On August 21, 1941, she gave birth to her first child, Elaine Detlie.

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Lake

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During the 1940's Veronica Lake captivated Hollywood audiences like few other actresses. She was a popular pinup queen during WWII and won fame co-starring in several films with Alan Ladd (Lake was short enough to play along aside the diminutive Ladd without emphasizing his small stature). Her claim to fame came with her celebrated "peek a boo" hairstyle, which many women in the early 1940's emulated, to the point where she was asked to change because it endangered the hair of female workers with armaments machinery! Most recently, Kim Basinger adopted this "Lake look" all the way to an Oscar in the film L.A. Confidential.

By the early 1950's however, Lake's career had hit the skids. Three broken marriages, a domineering stage mother, a manic depressive personality, and a whole lot o' liquor pushed her right into oblivion. After 1952, she would make only two more films, both low budget horror film trash. She frequented skid row hotels in New York City and even took work as a barmaid to keep close to a steady supply of booze. By the late 1960's she had bottomed out in Hollywood, Florida, often holing up in her apartment out of paranoid fears that the FBI was following her and tapping her phone. Those who saw her reported that the once great beauty had turned into a worn out mess, with rotting teeth, unwashed hair, and the pasty complexion of a bloated alcoholic.

In the early 1970s Lake enjoyed a brief return to the spotlight with the publication of a tell-all autobiography, which earned her enough cash to relocate to the British Isles. She married for a fourth time- to an English sea captain, but that soon ended in divorce. In early 1973, her body ravaged by alcoholism, she returned to the U.S. for a final time.

MORE: http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/l/Veronica%20Lake/veronicalake.htm