<\/p>\n
Veronica Lake, who was born Constance Frances Marie Okleman in Brooklyn, New York, captivated audiences when she graced screens in the 1940s. Despite starring in notable films such as This Gun for Hire and Sullivan\u2019s Travels, Lake\u2019s career had faded by the time she was 30. Known for her blonde locks and strikingly good looks, the actress suddenly disappeared from cinema screens almost as quickly as she appeared. In the early 1940s she was a superstar, adored by audiences and advertisers. She was one of five forties divas on whom the persona of Jessica Rabbit in the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was based with the others being Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Gene Tierney and Jayne Mansfield.<\/p>\n
She made 26 movies and at the peak of her career, she earned $4,500 (\u00a32,900) a week. According to a media outlet, in 1962 Lake was discovered working as a cocktail waitress and hostess in “a second-rate New York cocktail lounge”. However, she would later confirm she was not down and out. \u201cI\u2019m sick and tired of having people ask me about that,\u201d she told an interviewer later. \u201cI was paying $190 a month rent then and that\u2019s a long way from being broke.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
According to her memoir she penned with the help of the celebrated ghostwriter Donald Bain she did not want to be rescued and enjoyed working in a bar.<\/p>\n
In her book, Lake shared she made the decision to leave Hollywood<\/a> in 1952. \u201cI said, \u2018The hell with you, Hollywood<\/a>,\u2019\u201d she wrote. \u201cI\u2019ve never been back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople felt very sorry for me,\u201d wrote Lake. \u201cBut I really enjoyed the job\u2026 I seem to have found peace. Spare me the high pressures of success. I\u2019ve been there.\u201d<\/p>\n The actress, who was reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia as a child, allegedly turned to alcohol during the height of her fame to relieve herself from the symptoms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 1951, shortly after the IRS had seized their home due to unpaid taxes, she and her then-husband Andre DeToth filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n After three marriages, Lake had a brief comeback in the 1960s and early 1970s, including television appearances, stage work, and two low-budget films, Footsteps in the Snow (1966) and Flesh Feast (1970),<\/p>\n The troubled star was just 50 years old and penniless when she died of hepatitis in 1973.<\/p>\n According to the New York Times, Lake\u2019s ashes remained at a Vermont funeral home until 1976 when her friend, Donald Bain, paid $200 and had them shipped to her two close friends. The pair honoured Lake\u2019s wishes to spread her ashes in the waters off Miami.<\/p>\n However, the two apparently kept a small portion of the ashes, which were reportedly located at a New York antique store.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.express.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Veronica Lake, who was born Constance Frances Marie Okleman in Brooklyn, New York, captivated audiences when she graced screens in the 1940s. Despite starring in notable films such as This Gun for Hire and Sullivan\u2019s Travels, Lake\u2019s career had faded by the time she was 30. Known for her blonde locks and strikingly good looks, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1977706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[353728,22860,353726,345803,353727],"class_list":["post-1977705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-bankruptcy","tag-hollywood","tag-mental-health-section","tag-schizophrenia","tag-veronica-lake"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/A-list-star-quit-Hollywood-to-work-in-bar-died-penniless.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1977706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}