Veronica Lake (14 November 1922 – 7 July 1973) was a popular American film actress and pin-up model who enjoyed both popular and critical acclaim, especially for her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s.
Her success was fleeting. Following a string of broken marriages and long struggles with mental illness and alcoholism, she died almost destitute.
Veronica Lake was born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York on November 14, 1922. Her father, Harry E. Ockelman, of German-Dutch descent, worked for an oil company onboard a ship. When she was about one year old, the family moved to Florida but returned to Brooklyn 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) married family friend Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, a year later, and Ockelman began using his last name.
Connie was sent to an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal,...
Created by dipity on Feb 7, 2008
Last updated: 11/18/09 at 08:08 AM
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Veronica Lake died in Burlington, Vermont, Chittenden County
Flesh Feast (released in 1970, though shot in 1967) is an American horror film that features Veronica Lake in her final screen performance. Lake plays Dr. Elaine Frederick, a mad scientist working on developing maggots that prefer human flesh, while her services are used to make a clone of Adolf Hitler.She cooperates with the plan to resurrect Hitler as a way of exacting revenge for the death of her parents, political prisoners executed in a concentration camp. While convincing everyone the flesh-eating maggots are for regeneration research, she simply wants to throw them in the resurrected Hitler's face, which she does....,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065727
Ramrod is a 1947 film directed by André De Toth.
This cowboy drama from Hungarian director De Toth was the first of several films based on the stories of Western author Luke Short. De Toth's first Western is often compared to films noir movies released around the same time. The films star Veronica Lake was married to director De Toth. Original music by Adolph Deutsch with cinematography by noted cameraman Russell Harlan.
Connie Dickason (Lake) is a blonde and strong-willed daughter of a ranch owner. Her father is under control of a powerful local cattleman, Frank Ivey, whom he once wanted his daughter to marry. Connie instead marries a sheep rancher and inherits his land. Later, she gets caught up in a dangerous ranch standoff and begins to fall in love with a ranch hand Dave Nash (McCrea).
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039750
The Blue Dahlia is a 1946 American film noir made in black-and-white. The film marks the third pairing of stars Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.
Aspiring actress and 1947 murder victim Elizabeth Short was given the name the "Black Dahlia" as a play on this film's title. Incidentally, Universal Studios, the current rights-holder to this film, released a film in 2006 based on Short's murder.
Johnny (Ladd) returns home from the military with buddies Buzz (Bendix) and George (Beaumont) to find his wife Helen kissing her new boyfriend Eddie Harwood, the owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub. Helen admits her alcoholism caused their son's death. He pulls a gun on her but decides she's not worth it. Later, Helen is found dead and Johnny is the prime suspect. Johnny teams up with Joyce (Lake), the estranged wife of Eddie Harwood to help clear his name.
Actor Harold J. Stone made his first movie appearance in this film.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038369
So Proudly We Hail! is a 1943 film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Mark Sandrich, and starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard (who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance), George Reeves and Veronica Lake.
An effective sample of wartime propaganda, the film follows a group of military nurses sent to the Philippines during the early days of World War II . The movie was based on a book written by nurse Juanita Hipps a WWII nurse who served in Bataan and Corrigedor during the time when McArthur withdrew to Australia which ultimately led to the surrender of US and Philippine troops to Japan. Those prisoners of war were subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March. The movie was based on LTC Hipps' true story "I Served On Bataan."
The story covers many day to day events, and contrasts the brutality of war against the sometimes futile efforts of the nurses to provide medical aid and comfort. There are several striking moments in...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036367
The Glass Key is a novel by Dashiell Hammett, said to be his favorite among his works. It was first published in 1931, and tells the story of gambler and racketeer Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to crooked political boss Paul Madvig leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son. The novel was dedicated to onetime lover Nell Martin.There were two film adaptations made based on the novel. It has been asserted—though never officially corroborated—that the kidnapping and brutal beating of one of the characters in The Glass Key was the inspiration for the similar scenes in Yojimbo (1961) by Akira Kurosawa. (See also Red Harvest.)...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034798
This Gun for Hire is a 1942 film noir, directed by Frank Tuttle and based on the novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene.
Tagline: "He's dynamite with a gun or a girl."A hit man, called Raven (Alan Ladd), is doublecrossed by nightclub owner Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) who acts as a middleman for a traitorous industrialist, the president of Nitro Chemical, Alvin Brewster (Tully Marshall). Traveling to Los Angeles to kill his way to the top of his betrayers, Raven meets up with Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) a nightclub magician and singer. Graham's been enlisted by a senator to use Gates to find out who is making deals to manufacture poison gas for the Japanese. Ellen's fianceé Lt. Michael Crane (Robert Preston) tries as best he can to keep up, tracking Raven while wondering if his girlfriend has been kidnapped or is a willing accomplice. Yvonne De Carlo also has a small role.
When the film was first released, Ladd received fourth billing. Because of fan reaction and critical praise,...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035432
I Married a Witch is a 1942 romantic comedy film, directed by René Clair. It starred Veronica Lake as a witch whose plan for revenge goes comically awry. The film was based on a novel called The Passionate Witch by Thorne Smith, who died before he could finish it. It was completed by Norman Matson.
Two witches in colonial Salem, Jennifer (Veronica Lake) and her father Daniel (Cecil Kellaway), are burned at the stake after being denounced by Puritan Jonathan Wooley (Fredric March) and their ashes buried beneath a tree to imprison their evil spirits. In revenge, Jennifer curses Wooley and all his male descendants - they are doomed to always marry the wrong person.
Centuries pass. Unfortunate Wooley males are shown marrying shrewish women, generation after generation. Finally, lightning splits the tree, freeing the spirits of Jennifer and Daniel. They discover Wallace Wooley (March again), living nearby and running for governor, on the eve of marrying the ambitious Estelle Masterson (...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034881
Sullivan's Travels is a 1941 American film written and directed by Preston Sturges. It is a satire about a movie director, John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), who longs to make a socially relevant drama, but eventually learns that comedies are a more valuable contribution to society. The film features one of Veronica Lake's first performances as a leading lady. The title is a reference to Gulliver's Travels, the famous novel by satirist Jonathan Swift about another journey of self-discovery.
John L. Sullivan, a wealthy young Hollywood director, fresh off a string of very profitable, but shallow comedies (e.g. Ants in Your Plants of 1939), wants to direct a new and different kind of film entitled O Brother, Where Art Thou? which would give a serious depiction of the plight of the downtrodden. Not surprisingly, he is pressured by his studio bosses to direct another, more lucrative film instead, but the idealistic Sullivan refuses to give in.
He decides to dress as a penniless hobo and hit...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034240
Veronica Lake was born in Brooklyn, New York, New York
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