{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"When They Were Making It","title":"Veronica Lake: The Making and Unmaking of a Movie Star — Film Noir Stardom, a Fallen-Star Story, and the Woman Behind It All","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4558,"description":"Veronica Lake was one of the most unforgettable faces of 1940s Hollywood: blonde, beautiful, elusive, with a curtain of hair falling across one eye. Paramount turned that image into a sensation. But behind the \"Peek-a-Boo Girl\" was Constance Ockelman — a young actress whose life was far more complicated than either the glamour or the later downfall headlines allowed.\nFrom Brooklyn, Saranac Lake, Miami, and, finally, Beverly Hills, Lake arrived in Hollywood as a teenager and drifted through a handful of small parts before Paramount saw something different in her. For I Wanted Wings, the studio gave Constance Keane a new name, a new look, and a nightclub role that made audiences take notice. Veronica Lake was born.\nThis episode follows Lake through her remarkable early rise: Sullivan's Travels with Preston Sturges and Joel McCrea; the creation of the Peek-a-Boo Girl phenomenon; and the dark, charged crime pictures that paired her with Alan Ladd, including This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia. It explores how Lake became one of the defining women of the emerging film-noir cycle — cool, funny, watchful, and never quite as easy to read as Paramount's publicity suggested.\nIt also looks behind the image: a difficult first marriage, the loss of her infant son, her growing reputation as a difficult star, wartime stardom, and the series of professional and personal blows that slowly changed Lake's place at Paramount. By the end of the 1940s, the studio that had built her into a star had chosen not to renew her contract.\nWhat followed was not one simple collapse, however much the newspapers later preferred that version. Lake kept working — in live television, regional theatre, touring productions, and low-budget films — while navigating financial hardship, troubled marriages, alcoholism, and long periods of uncertainty.\nThen, in 1962, an Associated Press reporter recognized Veronica Lake working as a cocktail waitress at Manhattan's Martha Washington Hotel....","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Tes24ZxB1qT02fjSVHxfJY99rJ8MnAs1gX-xKNBvoeY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yZDVj/YjVjNTA5NWZiZTdh/Mjk1OWU2MDQ1M2Nm/MDdiYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}