A defiant lady looks back with no real regrets
Lake looks back with honesty, acceptance and understanding on a 30-film career between 1939 and 1970, an occupation towards which she often showed ambivalence. And equally she recounts the tumultuous issues that life dropped in her path – the death of her father in an accident, an overbearing mother who sued her, three failed marriages, guilt over inattention to her three children, a child who died, money struggles and the bottle.
She apparently dictated her story to American author and ghostwriter Donald Bain, and between the two of them they produced a compelling account that doesn't seem to hold back. It reads nicely, as though Lake is addressing you the reader personally. However, the book fell out of print, becoming rare for years, and Dean Street Press, which specialises in vintage fiction and non-fiction, seemingly had to strive to track it down for this 2020 edition.
It has an introduction by Eddie Muller, an American author and founder of the Film Noir Foundation that is dedicated to preserving and restoring films noirs , and he compares Lake to similarly torn actor Sterling Hayden, both having been reluctant stars and natural-born rebels who turned their backs on Hollywood, swapping fame for life as nomadic free spirits.
Muller points out that 'while the public has granted Sterling Hayden, a legendary boozer and hash-head, a legacy as a heroic, larger-than life iconoclast, it has branded Lake's life after Hollywood a steady downward spiral of abasement, worthy only of pity. Blame a cultural double standard that applauds reckless rebellion in men but shames it in women'. Well put.
Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, known to legions of moviegoers as Veronica Lake, was born in Brooklyn, New York State, on November 14, 1922, and her mother once intimated to her that she was a mistake, a very unwanted child. Connie was a tomboy in a normal comfortable middle-class family living in a fair neighbourhood.
She spent her pre-school years in Florida, her grade school years back in Brooklyn and her high school years in Florida and Montreal, New York State. She had a lead in a school play at age eight, and was third of 85 contestants in a Miss Miami beauty contest and won first place in a Miss Florida contest – flesh peddling, slaves markets, as she described these.
Her father died in February 1932 when she was 10 and her mother remarried a year later. Connie, her stepfather, mother and a cousin moved to Hollywood in summer 1938 when Lake was 16. She daydreamed occasionally of becoming an actress but had no compulsion, though her dominating mother had different ideas and enrolled her in acting school.
One of the girls there had a casting call at RKO for 'Sorority House' in 1939 and she asked Connie to accompany her. Both were taken on as extras. Connie had further bit parts in 'The Wrong Room' (1938) at RKO, 'Forty Little Mothers' (1940) at Metro and a couple of others.
She did a screen test for director Freddie Wilcox at Metro but the result was awful.
A producer unzipped his pants and put his half-erect penis on the desk 'lying there like a sausage on display in the local supermarket'. She threw a book, hit her target and left him howling. She says she never succumbed to that Hollywood staple, the casting couch.
Her fine, blonde hair was hard to manage and she was always trying to stop it falling in her eyes. Director Busby Berkeley decided instead that it distinguished her. She also tested for Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., and kept shaking her head to get the hair out of her eyes. The famous 'peek-a-boo' one-eyed look was born. 'Something I always considered a detriment to my appearance became my greatest asset. That's Hollywood, folks.'
She had her first featured role in 'I Wanted Wings' in 1941. Hornblow wanted to change her name and he spent a restless night thinking about it. He told her that when people looked into her navy-blue eyes they saw the calm coolness of a lake, and her classic features made him think of Veronica. (Just a whim? Who or why Veronica goes unexplained).
Working on 'I Wanted Wings' frightened her to death and she developed a self-defence, being very cocky and snippy. Her aloofness enabled her to get through the role but didn't endear her to the people working on the picture and gave her something of a poor reputation. However, it made her a star and she got a modest raise in salary.
She scored with 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941), upsetting director Preston Sturges by not disclosing she was six months pregnant. 'This Gun for Hire' and 'The Glass Key', both with Alan Ladd, and 'I Married a Witch', with Fredric March, were further successes, all in 1942.
Beauty shops nationwide began advertising the Veronica Lake hair-do, but government officials asked her to change it so that women working in war factories wouldn't get their long hair caught in the machinery. She wore it up in 1944's 'The Hour Before The Dawn'.
Lake's successful teaming with Ladd continued in 'The Blue Dahlia' (1946) and 'Saigon' (1948). 'Blue Dahlia' writer Raymond Chandler called her 'Miss Moronica Lake'. Others joked. Groucho Marx: 'I opened up my mop closet the other day and I thought Veronica Lake fell out.' Bob Hope: 'Veronica Lake wears her hair over one eye because it's a glass eye.'
She writes: 'I decided it was time to make Hollywood a thing of the past. At this point, cynics will say that quite the reverse was true; Hollywood decided to make Veronica Lake a thing of the past… I set foot in Hollywood again in June 1952, to obtain my final divorce from [Hungarian film director] André [DeToth]. I've never been back since.' Like others, DeToth had problems being 'Mr Lake', husband of a movie star, pin-up girl, sex symbol.
Lake moved to New York and made a precarious living doing television and theatre. She broke her ankle and was laid low for a time, paycheck to paycheck. A newspaper revelation that she was a cocktail waitress at a New York hotel caused world headlines, but she insists it was something she liked and not forced by debts. A long section of the book describes her years drinking in bars with her sailor boyfriend Andy, until he died from alcohol ailments.
Lake is quite matter of fact about her so-called decline. This reader is reminded of Edith Piaf's signature song 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien' – 'No! No regrets. No! I will have no regrets. All the things that went wrong, For at last I have learned to be strong. No! No regrets. No! I will have no regrets. For the grief doesn't last, it is gone, I've forgotten the past.' The Hollywood rebel had simply left glamour behind and wanted stardom without the usual trimmings.
The book, recall, was published in 1969. Before reading it I saw her on YouTube interviewed on 'The Dick Cavett Show' in 1971, two years from death, almost unrecognisable with shorter hair and aged face but perfectly content and throwing her head back in wild laughter a couple of times. And there is a rather sad photo on the internet of her standing outside the gates of Paramount Pictures that same year, the former beauty looking like a dowdy housewife in a cheap tracksuit. But she is giving a little smile and appears composed.
It seems the sadness is ours, not hers. Peace at last. 'And the memories I had I no longer desire. Both the good and the bad I have flung in a fire. And I feel in my heart that the seed has been sown. It is something quite new, it's like nothing I've known.' No regrets.
Rest in peace Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, sometimes 'legend' Veronica Lake.
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Budapest Times
02-08-2025
- Budapest Times
Dumbasses with good and bad rules, and no asseveration
Some clever person once memorably described American crime writer Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) as "the poet laureate of wild assholes with guns", apparently to Leonard's own amused satisfaction. And ours. We wish we'd written that. Someone else called him 'The Dickens of Detroit'. Not bad, we like that too. So we applied ourselves to the task… And in just a minute or so we came up with 'The doyen of dim crims'. Well, not fantastic but pretty good, yes? And if we took a bit more time over it, who knows what else we might cook up. (The 'Dimestore Dostoevsky' is another height to aim for but that description was applied to fellow American crime writer Jim Thompson (1906-1977). Oh, it's all good fun.) So better for the moment, then, to re-read Leonard, the man whose 'Ten Rules of Writing' were printed in The New York Times in 2001 and included such gems as 'Never open a book with weather', 'Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip' and 'Keep your exclamation points under control'. Memorably, he summed them up so: – 'If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.' Well, when you write the rules you can break them too, it seems, and 'Swag' does have a rare instance of Leonard ignoring one – 'Never use an adverb to modify the verb said' – with: 'Frank said, impatiently'. Swag' was first published in 1976 and is one of three Leonard novels re-released this mid-2025, along with 'The Switch' (1978) and 'Rum Punch' (1992). More will follow later this year and in 2026, including some of the Westerns with which Leonard began his career in the 1950s before turning to outright crime. His books haven't been out of print, it's just that every now and then it's time for fresh outings with arty new covers. Frank Ryan and Ernest Stick Jr., 'Stick', are the two protagonists in 'Swag'. Frank, a used-car salesman, finds car thief Stick about to steal a maroon '73 Camaro from his front lot. They wisecrack a bit. 'Maybe you think this is yours because you got one like it,' Stick says, sitting in the car. 'You say it's yours, you want to show me the registration?' Frank asks. 'Fuck no,' Stick replies, and drives off, leaving Frank standing there. The police catch him and Frank picks out Stick in a line-up ('You sure he's the one?' 'I'm sure it isn't one of those cops.') but then suddenly decides not to identify Stick in court. Instead, he has had an idea: armed robbery would be better than selling used cars and he needs a partner. Who better than this pleasant drifter with a knack for stealing cars? And Frank has 10 rules for success and happiness, written on cocktail napkins at various bars. These are '(1) Always be polite on the job. Say please and thank you, (2) Never say more than is necessary, (3) Never call your partner by name – unless you use a made-up name, (4) Dress well. Never look suspicious or like a bum, (5) Never use your own car (details to come), (6) Never count the take in the car, (7) Never flash money in a bar or with women, (8) Never go back to an old bar or hangout once you have moved up, (9) Never tell anyone your business. Never tell a junkie even your name, and (10) Never associate with people known to be in crime.' Says Stick 'I think you got an idea… a wild-ass idea,,, but you never know, do you?' They get guns and go to work: liquor stores, supermarkets, bars, mom and pop shops. The haul varies – too many people are using credit cards. Nothing too big though, no banks. And no gas stations because too many guys work there, some hard-looking, with wrenches and tyre irons. Frank's rules do indeed launch a successful career in armed robbery, better than they'd ever imagined. The partners pull off 31 robberies in the Detroit area in a few months, netting in six figures. They stash some in a bank, spend up on clothes and other baubles, and move into a suburban apartment where a lot of young, shapely women – Frank and Stick call them 'career girls' – live and hang around the pool. Frank and Stick keep a pile of cash in a detergent box under the sink for their party lifestyle. As is often the case with Leonard, his tales are written primarily or partly from a criminal perspective. 'Swag' follows the two miscreants, not detectives on their trail. The cops don't enter until near the end. And Frank and Stick are fairly likeable fellows. Leonard's forte for dialogue, an everyday urban rhythm, is to the fore, such as when they talk about the benefits of health clubs. Stick: 'I could never do pushups and all that shit… I don't know, it sounds good, but it's so fucking boring. The thing to do, just don't eat so much.' Leonard has fun. There's the Armenian store owner who refuses to hand over any money, even at gunpoint. Frank and Stick have to leave empty-handed. Stick rings up a woman's groceries in a supermarket while Frank is making the manager open the safe in the office. The two are having a quiet drink in a bar when a hold-up guy robs it, so Frank and Stick rob him in turn and lock him and the staff and patrons in the liquor storeroom. Next day when they're all freed the hold-up guy has been severely beaten and the others are all 'in a festive state of intoxication'. Frank and Stick aren't as dumbass as many of Leonard's characters but slowly things begin to fall apart. They're living the high life but they start bickering. Nya, nya, nya, like little kids, says Frank. Who's taking more money from under the sink? You had the car before and I want it now. You want to break the rules, I don't. Two guys, working together, living together, getting on each other's nerves, just like other couples. By now Frank is getting cocky and wanting to stretch out. One big job and retire for a while. He persuades a reluctant Stick, whose main aim is to get to Florida to see his little girl, who lives with his ex-wife. But their comfortable life gets blown to bits because their overconfidence and greed mean bigger risks, working with other criminals who are more professional and ruthless. Leonard's own 10 rules of writing are enlightening. Apart from those mentioned above, others are – Avoid prologues; Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue; Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' … ; Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose'; Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly; Avoid detailed descriptions of characters; and Don't go into great detail describing places and things. He gives his explanations, such as for the one about never using a verb other than 'said' – 'The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with 'she asseverated,' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.' Another gifted writer in another time, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), had his own dictum, that stories be neatly constructed with a beginning, a middle and an end. 'Swag' has an irresistible beginning, 106 words that set you up for the whole book, then the rapid-fire plot and snappy dialogue provide a fun crime caper in the middle. And the ending is perfect, right up to the very last page. 'Swag' is among the best of Elmore Leonard.
Budapest Times
20-07-2025
- Budapest Times
Dumb hoods screw up in kidnap gone wrong
Latter-day editions of books by late American crime writer Charles Willeford (1919-1988) have featured the front-cover accolade by late American crime writer Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) that 'No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford'. That's exceedingly generous praise from a man for whom many would offer exactly the same sentiment, that 'No one writes a better crime novel than Elmore Leonard'. While not wanting to enter a debate about who might have been the better of the two, it has to be said that Leonard's output of some 45 novels outstrips Willeford's of 18 or so, with both maintaining a remarkably high standard of idiosyncratic plotting, characterisation and dialogue in a felonious field that includes many other notable penmen and penwomen. (Leonard and Willeford have been great favourites at The Budapest Times for years, where we've consumed some 35 of Leonard's novels and just about all of Willeford's, but forced by threat of torture into a decision of some sort, rather than choosing one author we would at least opt for the latter's superlative 'Sideswipe' (1987) as nigh on unbeatable.) Well, just about matchless, that is, for 'The Switch', first published in 1978. is top-notch story-telling too, with its requisite badasses who are basically too stupid to be successful badasses. The badasses here are Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, Ordell a light-skinned Negro and Gara a dark-skinned Caucasian, so they are about even in shade (a typical Leonard touch, that). Not only are Leonard's hoods often dumb and screwing up, they can end up trying to rip off each other too, with guess-what results. Louis is going to be the dumb-ass here. Leonard liked to write things in a bit of an oblique way, so when he tells us that 'Louis had been down in Huntsville, Texas, keeping fit, clearing scrub all day, having his supper at five P.M. and turning the light out at ten', that's Elmore code for Louis having been in jail. Likewise, reading that 'Louis wore a cap – this summer a faded tan cap – straight and low over his eyes. Louis didn't go in for jewelry; a watch was enough, a $1,200 Benrus he'd picked up at the Flamingo Motor Hotel, McAllen, Texas', well, that's another roundabout for the reader to understand – he's a thief. He has indeed been away for nearly three years, and so now that he's out of stir and back in Detroit, his pal Ordell is taking him for a ride in Ordell's tan Ford van so that he can see the latest sights of the Motor Capital. As they cruise past the monumental Renaissance Centre on the riverfront, all glass and steel rising 700 feet in a five-tower complex, all Louis can say is that, 'Wow. It's big'. Ordell is nonplussed, asking, 'That's all you can say? It's big?' to which Louis adds: 'It's really big. If it fell over you could walk across it to Canada.' Another sight described by Ordell: '… a fine example of neo-ghetto… You can see it's not your classic ghetto yet, not quite ratty or rotten enough, but it's coming. Over there on the left, first whore of the day. Out for her vitamin C. And there's some more – hot pants with a little ass hanging out, showing the goods.' Louis was jailed after gunning his car at someone he didn't like to make him jump but cut it too close and broke the man's legs. 'I was arrested, charged with attempted murder, plea-bargained it down to felonious assault and got two to five in Huntsville. Served thirty months, same amount of time I was in the Navy, and I'll tell you something. Even being at [naval station] Norfolk, Virginia, I liked the Navy a little better.' Leonard is a master of casual humour. Ordell recounts how he went down to the Bahamas about seven, eight years ago. 'I had some money to spend, I said hey, go down to a paradise island and have some of those big rum drinks and watch the natives do all that quaint shit beating on the oil drums, you know?' And then there's Richard, full name Richard Edgar Monk, a cultist, racist, anti-communist, anti-semite, ex-private security guard with an arsenal of rifles, revolvers, a musket, shotguns – one sawed-off – grenades, bayonets, knives, a gas mask, a German helmet, an Afrika Korps soft hat, Nazi armbands, belt buckles, an SS death's head insignia, and boxes of cartridges and shotgun shells. His car has a shotgun mount, roll-bar and police siren. Richard is recruited because Ordell and Louis plan to kidnap the wife of a rich man and they need Richard's house to hold her until her husband pays a million-dollar ransom. Alongside Richard's World War Two memorabilia, the red, white and black swastika on the wall and photos of Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in his black SS uniform, Leonard notes in another nice touch that the couch and easychairs have crocheted antimacassars on the arms and headrests. There's something weird about Richard. The kidnap victim will be Mickey Dawson, the 'tennis mum' of a spoiled brat teenage son, Bo. She's sick to the teeth of her husband Frank. 'He's a pure asshole,' she says. For the irritable Frank, nothing his wife does is right and he's on her back all the time. Unknown to her, he has apartments in Detroit renovated with stolen materials and appliances, renting to pimps and prostitutes, grossing at least $100,000 a month but reporting only half as income, his money going into a numbered bank account. Frank also regularly goes to the Bahamas for a day or two, lately for several days, supposedly working on land development with foreign investors. He has a mistress there, Melanie. Ordell and Louis have a selection of rubber faces including four Richard Nixons, Frankenstein, a vampire, a witch, monsters, Micky Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy for disguise. They grab Mickey and take her to Richard's. It has all the makings of a terrible mess, Elmore Leonard-style – the two hoods and their psycho pal, and the Frank-Mickey-Melanie triangle. Unfortunately, unknown to the kidnappers, Frank has divorce papers in the pipeline and he wants to marry Melanie, so why should he want to pay out a million dollars to secure Mickey's release? In fact it would save him a lot of trouble if the kidnappers kill her. There's an interesting question that Leonard might be subtly leaving us to consider – are Ordell, Louis and Richard any more screwed up in their criminal ways than the 'respectable' Frank? The outcome is unseen and nicely absurd, a satisfying ending to an enjoyable book . The other two newly resissued Leonard paperbacks alongside 'The Switch' are 'Swag' (1976) and 'Rum Punch' (1992). Another 10 will follow at the end of this year and in March 2026. It's all about keeping the catalogue alive. These latest paperbacks don't mean that Elmore Leonard is back, because he never went away, and probably won't either. A couple of his tenets for good writing to keep the reader engaged were to never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue, and to never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' to keep the focus on the dialogue itself. For these and his other rules we remark that we are exceedingly grateful.
Budapest Times
12-07-2025
- Budapest Times
A defiant lady looks back with no real regrets
Doubtless, many people younger than Veronica Lake wrote autobiographies, with hers having been published in 1969 when she was only 47 years old. But by 1973 she was dead; as legend has it, a washed-up, bankrupt Hollywood beauty who drank to oblivion. It would seem reasonable to assume that she had accepted her glory days would never return and it was time to set the record straight. Even, perhaps, that she felt her remaining days were few. Lake looks back with honesty, acceptance and understanding on a 30-film career between 1939 and 1970, an occupation towards which she often showed ambivalence. And equally she recounts the tumultuous issues that life dropped in her path – the death of her father in an accident, an overbearing mother who sued her, three failed marriages, guilt over inattention to her three children, a child who died, money struggles and the bottle. She apparently dictated her story to American author and ghostwriter Donald Bain, and between the two of them they produced a compelling account that doesn't seem to hold back. It reads nicely, as though Lake is addressing you the reader personally. However, the book fell out of print, becoming rare for years, and Dean Street Press, which specialises in vintage fiction and non-fiction, seemingly had to strive to track it down for this 2020 edition. It has an introduction by Eddie Muller, an American author and founder of the Film Noir Foundation that is dedicated to preserving and restoring films noirs , and he compares Lake to similarly torn actor Sterling Hayden, both having been reluctant stars and natural-born rebels who turned their backs on Hollywood, swapping fame for life as nomadic free spirits. Muller points out that 'while the public has granted Sterling Hayden, a legendary boozer and hash-head, a legacy as a heroic, larger-than life iconoclast, it has branded Lake's life after Hollywood a steady downward spiral of abasement, worthy only of pity. Blame a cultural double standard that applauds reckless rebellion in men but shames it in women'. Well put. Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, known to legions of moviegoers as Veronica Lake, was born in Brooklyn, New York State, on November 14, 1922, and her mother once intimated to her that she was a mistake, a very unwanted child. Connie was a tomboy in a normal comfortable middle-class family living in a fair neighbourhood. She spent her pre-school years in Florida, her grade school years back in Brooklyn and her high school years in Florida and Montreal, New York State. She had a lead in a school play at age eight, and was third of 85 contestants in a Miss Miami beauty contest and won first place in a Miss Florida contest – flesh peddling, slaves markets, as she described these. Her father died in February 1932 when she was 10 and her mother remarried a year later. Connie, her stepfather, mother and a cousin moved to Hollywood in summer 1938 when Lake was 16. She daydreamed occasionally of becoming an actress but had no compulsion, though her dominating mother had different ideas and enrolled her in acting school. One of the girls there had a casting call at RKO for 'Sorority House' in 1939 and she asked Connie to accompany her. Both were taken on as extras. Connie had further bit parts in 'The Wrong Room' (1938) at RKO, 'Forty Little Mothers' (1940) at Metro and a couple of others. She did a screen test for director Freddie Wilcox at Metro but the result was awful. A producer unzipped his pants and put his half-erect penis on the desk 'lying there like a sausage on display in the local supermarket'. She threw a book, hit her target and left him howling. She says she never succumbed to that Hollywood staple, the casting couch. Her fine, blonde hair was hard to manage and she was always trying to stop it falling in her eyes. Director Busby Berkeley decided instead that it distinguished her. She also tested for Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., and kept shaking her head to get the hair out of her eyes. The famous 'peek-a-boo' one-eyed look was born. 'Something I always considered a detriment to my appearance became my greatest asset. That's Hollywood, folks.' She had her first featured role in 'I Wanted Wings' in 1941. Hornblow wanted to change her name and he spent a restless night thinking about it. He told her that when people looked into her navy-blue eyes they saw the calm coolness of a lake, and her classic features made him think of Veronica. (Just a whim? Who or why Veronica goes unexplained). Working on 'I Wanted Wings' frightened her to death and she developed a self-defence, being very cocky and snippy. Her aloofness enabled her to get through the role but didn't endear her to the people working on the picture and gave her something of a poor reputation. However, it made her a star and she got a modest raise in salary. She scored with 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941), upsetting director Preston Sturges by not disclosing she was six months pregnant. 'This Gun for Hire' and 'The Glass Key', both with Alan Ladd, and 'I Married a Witch', with Fredric March, were further successes, all in 1942. Beauty shops nationwide began advertising the Veronica Lake hair-do, but government officials asked her to change it so that women working in war factories wouldn't get their long hair caught in the machinery. She wore it up in 1944's 'The Hour Before The Dawn'. Lake's successful teaming with Ladd continued in 'The Blue Dahlia' (1946) and 'Saigon' (1948). 'Blue Dahlia' writer Raymond Chandler called her 'Miss Moronica Lake'. Others joked. Groucho Marx: 'I opened up my mop closet the other day and I thought Veronica Lake fell out.' Bob Hope: 'Veronica Lake wears her hair over one eye because it's a glass eye.' She writes: 'I decided it was time to make Hollywood a thing of the past. At this point, cynics will say that quite the reverse was true; Hollywood decided to make Veronica Lake a thing of the past… I set foot in Hollywood again in June 1952, to obtain my final divorce from [Hungarian film director] André [DeToth]. I've never been back since.' Like others, DeToth had problems being 'Mr Lake', husband of a movie star, pin-up girl, sex symbol. Lake moved to New York and made a precarious living doing television and theatre. She broke her ankle and was laid low for a time, paycheck to paycheck. A newspaper revelation that she was a cocktail waitress at a New York hotel caused world headlines, but she insists it was something she liked and not forced by debts. A long section of the book describes her years drinking in bars with her sailor boyfriend Andy, until he died from alcohol ailments. Lake is quite matter of fact about her so-called decline. This reader is reminded of Edith Piaf's signature song 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien' – 'No! No regrets. No! I will have no regrets. All the things that went wrong, For at last I have learned to be strong. No! No regrets. No! I will have no regrets. For the grief doesn't last, it is gone, I've forgotten the past.' The Hollywood rebel had simply left glamour behind and wanted stardom without the usual trimmings. The book, recall, was published in 1969. Before reading it I saw her on YouTube interviewed on 'The Dick Cavett Show' in 1971, two years from death, almost unrecognisable with shorter hair and aged face but perfectly content and throwing her head back in wild laughter a couple of times. And there is a rather sad photo on the internet of her standing outside the gates of Paramount Pictures that same year, the former beauty looking like a dowdy housewife in a cheap tracksuit. But she is giving a little smile and appears composed. It seems the sadness is ours, not hers. Peace at last. 'And the memories I had I no longer desire. Both the good and the bad I have flung in a fire. And I feel in my heart that the seed has been sown. It is something quite new, it's like nothing I've known.' No regrets. Rest in peace Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, sometimes 'legend' Veronica Lake.
