VERONICA LAKE

Veronica Lake was an actress from the 1930s to the 1970s. She is best remembered from the 1940s as the sexy girl in many film noirs. Some of her movies include: Sullivan's Travels, This Gun For Hire, So Proudly We Hail!, The Glass Key, Hold Back the Dawn, The Blue Dahlia, I Married a Witch, and Star Spangled Rhythm. Note that many people remember the story of her cutting her hair, but it is quite likely that they remember it "wrong". What was the story? It was that she cut her hair because women were working in factories, and the government did not want women to get their hair caught in machines, so they asked Miss Lake to be a role model and "cut hers first". While it is true that Veronica Lake was a gigantic star in 1942, and it is true that she cut her hair at that time, the above is not the correct story, but one of those "urban legends"! We auctioned a great still of her where it explained that she offered to cut her famous long hair as an inducement to get people to buy war bonds. After $180,000 was raised, she cut 1 inch of her hair, and she said that "for $5,000,000, she'll cut the whole thing off"! Of course, that money was raised, and she DID cut her hair, and sadly discovered that her wonderful hair was a major part of her appeal, and her stardom quickly diminished. Lake passed away in 1973 at the age of 50 from hepatitis.