American actress Veronica Lake was BOTD in 1922. Born Constance Ockelman in New York City, her father died when she was ten. She was raised by her mother and stepfather in upstate New York and latterly Miami, Florida. She and her family moved to Hollywood in 1938 where she was briefly contracted to MGM studios, taking bit parts in films. She became an overnight star playing a nightclub singer in the 1941 wartime drama I Wanted Wings, admired for her elegant, frosty beauty and lustrous blonde hair. Box office success followed in Preston Sturges’ Depression-era comedy Sullivan’s Travels and René Clair’s I Married a Witch, both starring John McCrea, and she was well-cast as a femme fatale who torments Alan Ladd in crime dramas The Gun for Hire and The Glass Key. During World War Two, she travelled through the United States advertising war bonds, and appeared in the patriotic war film So Proudly We Hail! Lake struggled with mental illness and alcoholism for most of her life, earning a reputation for being difficult to work with and clashing with many of her co-stars and directors. After a series of box office flops, she made an impressive comeback in the 1946 film noir The Black Dahlia, scripted by Raymond Chandler and again co-starring Ladd. Released from her studio contract in 1948, she appeared in a series of unsuccessful B-movies, directed by her then-husband Andre de Toth. After filing for bankruptcy in 1951, Lake separated from de Toth and moved to New York, living in poverty and being arrested frequently for public drunkenness. News reports in 1963 of her being destitute triggered a brief career comeback, with appearances in the Broadway musical Best Foot Forward, a London revival of Tennessee Williams‘ play A Streetcar Named Desire and roles on television. She published her memoirs in 1969, detailing her volatile career, three disastrous marriages, estrangement from her children, struggles with alcoholism and affairs with Howard Hughes and Aristotle Onassis. Openly bisexual, she also had affairs with Greta Garbo and Rita Berry. She co-produced and starred in her final film, the low-budget horror Flesh Fest, in 1970. She died of 1973 of complications from alcoholism, aged 50. Her reputation was rehabilitated after her death, and in 1960, she was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her glamorous onscreen persona and signature “peek-a-boo” hairstyle inspired the character of Jessica Rabbit in the 1988 film Who Killed Roger Rabbit? In 1997, actress Kim Basinger won an Oscar for playing a Lake-lookalike escort in the film L.A. Confidential, prompting renewed interest in Lake’s career and filmography.