page_title: Veronica Lake
section_title: Series of classic movies
hierarchical_section_title: Veronica Lake / Film career / Series of classic movies
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea from Sullivan's Travels.
context_page_description: Veronica Lake was an American film, stage, and television actor. Lake was best known for her femme fatale roles in film noirs with Alan Ladd during the 1940s and her peek-a-boo hairstyle. By the late 1940s, Lake's career began to decline, due in part to her alcoholism. She made only one film in the 1950s, but made several guest appearances on television. She returned to the big screen in 1966 in the film Footsteps in the Snow, but the role failed to revitalize her career.
  Lake's memoir, Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake, was published in 1970. Her final screen role was in a low-budget horror film, Flesh Feast. Lake died in July 1973 from hepatitis and acute kidney injury at the age of 50.
context_section_description: Paramount announced two follow-up movies, China Pass and Blonde Venus. Instead, Lake was cast in Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels with Joel McCrea. She was six months pregnant when filming began.
  Paramount put Lake in a thriller, This Gun for Hire (1942), with Robert Preston as her love interest. However, she shared more scenes with Alan Ladd; the two of them were so popular together that they would be reteamed in lead roles for three more films. Both had cameos in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), an all-star Paramount film.
  Lake was meant to be reunited with McCrea in another comedy, I Married a Witch, (also 1942) produced by Sturges and directed by René Clair, but McCrea refused to act with her again, reportedly saying, "Life's too short for two films with Veronica Lake". Production was delayed, enabling Lake to be reunited with Ladd in The Glass Key (again 1942), replacing Patricia Morison. The male lead in I Married a Witch was eventually played by Fredric March and the resulting movie, like The Glass Key, was successful at the box office. René Clair, the director of I Married a Witch, said of Lake, "She was a very gifted girl, but she didn't believe she was gifted."
  Lake was meant to co-star with Charles Boyer in Hong Kong for Arthur Hornblow, but it was not made. She received acclaim for her part as a suicidal nurse in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). At the peak of her career, she earned $4,500 a week.
  Lake had a complex personality and acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with. Eddie Bracken, her co-star in Star Spangled Rhythm, in which Lake appeared in a musical number, was quoted as saying, "She was known as 'The Bitch' and she deserved the title." However, Lake and McCrea did make another film together, Ramrod (1947). During filming of The Blue Dahlia (1946), screenwriter Raymond Chandler referred to her as "Moronica Lake".
caption: Lake in her first starring role, opposite Joel McCrea in Sullivan's Travels (1941)
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