Veronica Lake, who became a star as the girl with the “peekaboo” hair, was born Constance Ockelman in Brooklyn, NY. She was one of the most popular pinups of World War II and often said of herself: “I never did cheesecake. I just used my hair.”

After coming in third in a beauty contest, Constance and her mother went to Hollywood. She took acting lessons while appearing in a few little theatre productions and later landed some small parts in movies. The name she used at that time was Constance Keane. Her soon to be famous hairdo was first seen in the 1940 film “Forty Little Mothers.”

The screen test she made at M-G-M failed to get her a contract, but Paramount signed her and changed her name. The blonde mane was kept under a boy’s cap during much of “Sullivan’s Travels,” in 1941. In 1942, she starred opposite Alan Ladd in “This Gun for Hire.” Not only was she short enough to compliment him, but their screen chemistry made them for a while the hottest duo in movies. (Contrary to what most people believed, Lake and Ladd never knew each other very well).

John Russell Taylor, writing in “Sight and Sound,” said her strange, husky voice, that face-obscuring mane of blonde hair, her large, lustrous eyes, the slightly sunken cheeks and the then heavily made up lips, marked “the apogee of 40s glamour.”

After Veronica left Paramount, her private life was almost as publicized as her movie roles had been. She divorced her first husband; she was sued by her mother for nonsupport; she and her second husband filed for bankruptcy and their Hollywood home was seized for non-payment of taxes. After her second divorce, Veronica moved to New York City, where she became a hostess at a restaurant at the Martha Washington Hotel. Before a brief comeback, she also worked as a waitress in Greenwich Village.

Veronica. (who always called herself Connie), began having a drinking problem in the early 70s. It began to take its toll on the former actress both physically and psychologically. Her autobiography, “Veronica,” and her interviews subsequently revealed a brutally frank Veronica Lake. That quality, as well as the great vulnerability she projected, were never captured on the screen. (Critics said her humor about herself and her undisguised contempt for falseness were traits that could only stymie a career in the movie capital).

When she died of hepatitis in 1973, Veronica was in the process of being divorced from her fourth husband. She was a grandmother and had just turned 52.