VERONICA LAKE: Happy Birthday (If I had hair, it would drape over an eye as I type this.)

Veronica Lake is iconic even to those who do not recognize know her name, as her signature 'peekaboo bang' style is incorporated into the glamor oeuvre of many female celebrities a and performances. Obviously, Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential and Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (or their tresses) owe Lake, or at least the goddess Paramount created from one Constance Frances Marie Ockelman and christened Veronica Lake. But her look is also fairly ubiquitous to many retro- Classic Hollywood red carpets or magazine covers or music videos.


The actress was sometimes window dressing to Alan Ladd in her short career and never fully able to able to stretch herself. A few of her earliest featured performances, however, capture an inherent comedic timing and raw nuance.  Lake is undeniable as The Girl in Preston Sturges' hybrid message picture Sullivan's Travels (1941) and she is one cool sorceress in I Married a Witch (1942) The wartime, homefront drama So Proudly We Hail! (1943) asserts Lake's dramatic potential sans bangs. Though her performances with Ladd in such noirs as This Gun for Hire (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946) are iconic, celebrated conceptions of the femme fatale or twists upon the fatale ideal, the actress seems to have less and less to actually do in each film. Her ample charisma certain makes up for lesser character development. In the mid-1940s, a combination of personal tragedy (loss of a child and divorce) and professional misfires crippled her career.


And yet her image endures. Her signature style remains the go-to aesthetic for any fatale role. A revisit of her films often uncovers something more than artifice, however. So on the eve of her birthday, Veronica Lake should certainly be celebrated!