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Preston Sturges

Veronica Lake – the power of Hollywood

1941 studio portrait of Veronica Lake
1941. Veronica Lake, femme fatale. Read more.

Veronica Lake is a cult figure. Just take a look on eBay: vintage photos of her are scarce, sought after and fetch a premium over those of most of her contemporaries.

In the early 1940s she was a superstar, adored by audiences and advertisers. She was one of four forties divas on whom the persona of Jessica Rabbit in the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was based (the others were Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall and Gene Tierney; Jayne Mansfield, who lent her cleavage, was a product of the fifties). Veronica also inspired Kim Basinger’s character, call-girl Lynn Bracken, in the 1997 noir, L.A. Confidential.

So, what’s all the fuss about?

Well, Veronica Lake was one of the most distinctive and alluring seductresses of 1940s Hollywood with her peekaboo tresses, curvaceous figure and smoky delivery. She had that elusive and undefinable onscreen charisma that distinguishes a star from the supporting cast. And she was a versatile actress, equally compelling in thrillers and comedies.

Incredible as it seems knowing Veronica Lake only through her movies, according to director Preston Sturges, interviewed by gossip columnist Sheilah Graham:

She’s one of the little people. Like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Freddie Bartholomew when he started, who take hold of an audience immediately. She’s nothing much in real life, a quiet, rather timid little thing. But the screen transforms her and brings her to life.

Her rags-to-riches-to-rags story casts a revealing light on the movie studios of the era. The eye for the main chance, the creativity and the marketing savvy on which Hollywood was built. And the negligence, the exploitation and the immorality that ran alongside them. What became of Veronica Lake was and remains a cautionary tale for aspiring starlets.

Veronica Lake – Hollywood giveth

In her own words:

Veronica Lake is a Hollywood creation. Hollywood is good at doing that sort of thing. Its proficiency at transforming little Connie Ockleman of Brooklyn into sultry, sensuous Veronica Lake was proved by the success of the venture. And the subject, me, was willing and in some small ways able.

The transformation (these days we’d call it rebranding) happens after a screen test at Paramount. Take a bow, Oscar-nominated producer, Arthur Hornblow, Jr:

Connie, here’s how I came to choose your new name. I believe that when people look into those navy blue eyes of yours, they’ll see a calm coolness – the calm coolness of a lake. And your features, Connie, are classic features. And when I think of classic features, I think of Veronica.

This after Mr Hornblow has identified her trademark feature. During her screen test, one of Veronica’s elbows slips off the table on which it’s resting. Her long, blonde hair falls over her right eye and she spends the next few minutes tossing her head to get it out of the way. It’s not the first time her hair has given her this problem. It behaved in the same way in Busby Berkeley’s 1940 movie, Forty Little Mothers (fast forward to 27:50). But Hornblow is the first to recognize its potential as a marketing device. The peekaboo is born.

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Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl

Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl

1941. Veronica Lake wears her honey-blonde hair with a deep side parting and swept over to the opposite side. Soft waves drape her cheek and an S-curl falls seductively over...

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Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl

Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl

1943. Veronica Lake goes to a good deal of trouble to maintain her signature hairstyle. According to LIFE magazine:

It takes a lot of time,...

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Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl

Veronica Lake, the peekaboo girl

1944. The peekaboo isn’t the world’s most practical style – it tends to get caught in car doors, lifts and electric fans. But LIFE magazine reports...

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It debuts in I Wanted Wings (1940), Veronica Lake’s breakthrough movie, in which she plays the part of a sultry nightclub singer. It quickly becomes all the rage and across the nation women flock to beauty salons to get “The Lake Look.” Groucho Marx quips, “I opened up my mop closet the other day and I thought Veronica Lake fell out.” And the November 24, 1941 issue of LIFE magazine contains a three-page article that describes Veronica Lake’s hair as “a cinema property of world influence.”

Unfortunately, its ongoing popularity soon becomes a problem in wartime America because a number of women in munitions factories are injured when their long hair gets caught in assembly-line machinery. At the behest of the War Womanpower Commission, Veronica Lake changes her hairstyle and makes a newsreel to promote her new look.

But back to I Wanted Wings and its 18-year-old wannabee… The peekaboo would not have caught on had the movie not pulled in the punters. That it succeeds in doing so is to a large extent down to the marketing. This in turn involves a publicity shoot that creates quite a stir. As with the peekaboo, the defining image is the result of a lucky accident. Here’s how Veronica Lake remembers it:

One day, I was standing close to a B-17 as the photographer was doing coy set-ups with me. The pilot of the plane either didn’t see us or held all motion-picture people in scorn. He started engines just as I was leaning over in one of those ridiculous poses that were such favorites with publicity photographers those days. My rear end was towards the plane, and I was peeking around to my right at the camera when the prop wash hit. It caught my dress and blew it up around my thighs. The photographer captured the moment, chuckled at what would probably be a funny but unusable photo, and went on to take others. It ended up as the photograph the studio used in their advance mailing for I Wanted Wings. It was released to newspapers and magazines all over the nation. And it hit big.

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

1942. In This Gun for Hire Veronica Lake’s love interest is Robert Preston, but she actually shares more scenes with Alan Ladd. The pairing turns out to be a masterstroke...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

1942. The Ladd/Lake pairing works at a personal level – the two actors hit it off with each other. In her autobiography, Veronica recalls:

Both of us were very...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

1942. Having earned her stripes in I Wanted Wings and Sullivan’s Travels, Veronica is on a roll and has top billing as Ellen Graham in This Gun for Hire. Ellen...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

1942. This Gun for Hire is loosely based on Graham Greene’s 1936 novel, A Gun for Sale. The plot deals with international intrigue and treason revolving around the sale of...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

1942. This Gun for Hire is popular with audiences and critics alike. Norbert Lusk, writing in the May 25, 1942 edition of The Los Angeles Times is a fan: “To...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for This Gun for Hire

1942. This shot is circulated by the studio for reproduction in the fan magazines read by all the girls eager to emulate Veronica Lake's peekaboo hairstyle. A caption on the...

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The fact is, Veronica is a real looker. By age 16 she’s already bosomy – by no means the norm in post-Depression America – and not averse to flaunting her charms. This is not lost on the guys at Paramount, who gleefully take full advantage. As critic Cecelia Ager observes in PM, a New York daily tabloid:

Veronica Lake poses in a lamé gown
1941. Quintessential Veronica Lake. Read more.

Miss Lake is supposed to be a femme fatale and to that end it was arranged her truly splendid bosom be unconfined and draped ever so slightly in a manner to make the current crop of sweater girls prigs by comparison. Such to do has been made over doing justice to those attributes of Miss Lake that everything else about her has been thrown out of focus. The effect is too uncanny.

Veronica may be perfectly formed, but she’s also small – 4 foot 11 inches (just under 1.5 metres) tall to be precise – one inch shorter and she’d be classified as a dwarf. With a star on their hands, Paramount aren’t going to let that get in the way and their solution is inspired.

They pair her with one of their leading men, Alan Ladd, whose nickname at school was “Tiny.” With him being just over 5 foot 6 inches (a little under 1.7 metres) tall, it’s a match made in heaven. They co-star in seven movies including three classics: This Gun for Hire (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946). It’s like Bogey and Bacall but without the offscreen romance.

Looks to die for, luck and studio opportunism aside, Veronica Lake has two other ingredients vital to her transformation into a star. The first is star quality. It’s impossible to define but either you have it or you don’t. Hollywood is overflowing with gorgeous dames but most of them fail to register onscreen. Veronica is different. Onscreen she’s simply mesmerizing. No two ways about it.

Then there’s her flair for acting.

In addition to the films already mentioned, three others showcase her talent. In Mark Sandrich’s So Proudly We Hail (1943), starring alongside Claudette Colbert and Paulette Goddard, Veronica has the movie’s most dramatic scene, in which she breaks down and voices hysterical hatred for the Japanese. Paulette is Oscar-nominated but it’s Veronica who delivers the emotional core of the film, and that scene of hers really underscores the brutal struggle of the war in the Pacific.

In the two others, she’s an accomplished comédienne. In Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Veronica dresses as a hobo and takes to the road in the company of Joel McCrea. To the suggestion of which the studio’s incredulous response is: “She’s not an actress, she’s a great-looking dame with a great chest and nutty hair. But she’s no actress.” For most of the film, neither her peekaboo nor her curves are on display – in the case of the latter, just as well because she’s six months pregnant when filming begins!

Veronica Lake being made up
1941. Veronica Lake being made up. Photo by Talmage Morrison. Read more.

In I Married a Witch (1942), she is Jennifer, a witch whose plan for revenge doesn’t go quite as she intended. Her victim and protagonist is played by Frederic March. Pre-production, he describes Veronica as “a brainless little blonde sexpot, void of any acting ability.” She retaliates by calling him a “pompous poseur.” And they keep on winding each other up on set to the point where March nicknames the movie I Married a Bitch. Nevertheless, the result is charming, witty and an inspiration for 1960s TV series Bewitched.

By 1943, age 21 Veronica Lake is at the peak of her career and earning $4,500 a week.

Veronica Lake – Hollywood taketh away

And then she falls off a cliff. In 1944, the powers-that-be at Paramount, to whom she’s contracted, make a fatal mistake. They cast her as Dora Bruckmann, a Nazi spy, in The Hour Before Dawn. It’s a lousy role and pretty much guaranteed to alienate her from her audience. What’s more she struggles with the Austrian accent she has to adopt. Her acting becomes stilted as a result. The film is a box-office flop and she takes a lot of the flack.

Suddenly Veronica Lake’s career is on the skids and Paramount fail to come up with any kind of strategy to deal with the situation. They cannot see beyond her sex appeal and they undermine all the good work of Hornblow and Sturges with a series of second-rate roles in second-rate movies such as Hold That Blonde! and Out of This World. As Veronica herself observes in her autobiography, “the formula dictated that I was to be cast in roles where low-cut gowns and loose hair would be featured.”

And that brings us to the whole thorny subject of Hollywood and the issues raised over half a century later by the #metoo movement. Veronica Lake is withering on the topic:

Hollywood gives a young girl the aura of one giant, self-contained orgy farm, its inhabitants dedicated to crawling into every pair of pants they can find.

She goes on to highlight the starlet’s dilemma:

Many producers know the girls who come through their office doors desperately want a part. In many cases, it’s a matter of pride; what to write their parents or boy friends back in Waterloo or Louisville or Amarillo about Hollywood and how it’s being so good to them. They have to succeed because they were told they wouldn’t when they pulled up their roots and headed west. The town was crawling with out-of-town girls who were there trying to prove something to someone back home. And the longer they went without even a crowd scene in a Grade B thriller, the more desperate they became. And producers sense this.

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod

1947. Ramrod is the first film Veronica Lake makes outside Paramount since becoming a star. It’s directed by her husband, André De Toth and reunites her with Joel McCrea, her...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod

1947. A contemporary review in the June 30 edition of The New York Times is complimentary about Veronica Lake’s performance in Ramrod:

"Ramrod" … is...

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Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod

Veronica Lake, publicity shot for Ramrod

1947. Ramrod has been described as one of the earliest examples of an adult western – grim and violent but fascinating. In his film review for...

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Let’s backtrack for a moment… Age 10, Constance Ockelman as she then was, lost her father. She was brought to Beverley Hills by her ambitious and domineering mother (Jean Harlow and Judy Garland say Hi.) She’s 16 years old when MGM award her her first contract, 17 when she appears in her first movies (walk-on parts for RKO) and 18 when she joins Paramount. She’s immature, out of her depth and vulnerable. Surely the studios, who are planning on cashing in on her potential, owe her some kind of duty of care? Do they hell. They leave her to fend for herself:

My age worked against me in those early days of my career. I was so in-between, so not this or not that – seventeen. I was too old to receive the understanding accorded the child stars when they fouled up or threw tantrums. And I was too young to function smoothly in the adult world of Hollywood. I couldn’t accept so many eventualities and simple facts of movie-making life. Or life itself, for that matter. I was trying to act thirty and usually ended up acting fifteen.

According to René Clair, director of I Married a Witch, “She was a very gifted girl, but she didn’t believe she was gifted.” The studio does little to build her self-confidence. And you can bet she also has to find a way of dealing with plenty of bitching too from actresses jealous of her overnight success. Little surprise, then, that she develops a hard carapace to fend off unwanted advances and cover her insecurities.

Little surprise, too, if she’s uptight on set and difficult to work with. Frederic March is not the only star with whom she falls out. Joel McCrea declines the role of male lead in I Married a Witch, because he doesn’t want to work with her again after his experience as her co-star in Sullivan’s Travels. Eddie Bracken, her co-star in Star-Spangled Rhythm, quips “She was known as ‘The Bitch’ and she deserved the title.” Raymond Chandler, who writes the screenplay for The Blue Dahlia, scathingly dubs her “Moronica Lake.”

So Veronica Lake’s career goes into terminal decline. To all intents and purposes, she’s finished at Hollywood before the forties are out.

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Veronica Lake has her hair styled by Victor Honig

Veronica Lake has her hair styled by Victor Honig

1946. Veronica Lake prepares for her role as Joyce Harwood in The Blue Dahlia. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

HARVEST TIME.
Two V's get...

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Veronica Lake tucks in on the set of Saigon

Veronica Lake tucks in

1947. The sub and the gusto with which Veronica is devouring it are strikingly at odds with the gown she’s wearing. Still, this is a hectic time for her and...

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Veronica Lake on set

Veronica Lake on the set of Saigon

1947. Veronica Lake poses alongside a studio light on the set of Saigon. Assisted by the retoucher’s art – absolutely standard practice – her figure is to die for.

Saigon...

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What becomes of Veronica Lake

And what about Veronica Lake’s personal life? The story is depressingly familiar: a series of failed marriages, financial problems and alcoholism. It’s all very reminiscent of Hedy Lamarr.

She has three husbands. She marries John Detlie, a movie art director and 14 years her senior, in 1940 when she’s 18 years old.

John never really expressed displeasure at my stardom. But it was there, deeply embedded in him and growing deeper as each day passed. … Men wrote me letters, most simple puff but some lewd and shocking. And my earning power, although not realized as yet, was now far greater than John’s. … [It] chipped away at John’s ego as husband and provider. There he was, college educated with honors and immensely talented, married to a runny-nosed tom-boy from Brooklyn who just barely finished high school and was a screen favorite just because Freddie Wilcox liked her chest or the way she walked or something called “having it.”

Veronica Lake, blonde fisherwoman
1942. Veronica Lake, blonde fisherwoman. Read more.

The marriage lasts just three years – time enough for her to have two children in the midst of a hectic filming schedule. Their daughter, Elaine, is born in 1941. Their son, Anthony, is born prematurely in 1943 after Veronica trips over a lighting cable on the set of The Hour Before Dawn – such a cursed film. He dies a week later. It’s around this time that Veronica Lake’s alcohol problem really takes off.

Husband number 2 is André De Toth – in his own words a “Hungarian-born, one-eyed American cowboy from Texas.” He lost the sight of one eye during his youth but that won’t get in the way of him marrying seven times. He’s making a career for himself as a film director and will be known for his gritty, psychologically acute and unflinchingly violent B-movies. Rumour has it that he’s a proud and violent man himself. Early signs are not promising:

It started at the earliest possible moment – our wedding night. We went for a wedding dinner at a favorite restaurant of André’s in Hollywood. We entered and were greeted by his favorite waitress. She obviously became flustered at seeing us. “Oh, good evening, Miss Lake … and Mr. Lake … I mean …” … He got mad, mad enough to walk out of the restaurant and leave me on our wedding night.

The couple have two children but André’s financial fecklessness puts Veronica under huge pressure:

Maybe if the money wasn’t such a necessity I could have held out, made demands, threatened to stop working unless they came up with better parts for me. But again in my life, money was getting tight despite our combined incomes.

Studios without strategies for their stars, stars who accept crummy roles because they need the money, and husbands who can’t cope with wives who are more famous and higher earners than themselves. These are three recurring themes in forties Hollywood.

To compound the situation, in 1948 Veronica’s mother sues her for lack of filial love and responsibility – she wants more money. The marriage ends in tears. In 1951 the couple file for bankruptcy, the IRS seize their home for unpaid taxes and Veronica seeks refuge in New York. The divorce comes through the following year.

To support herself, she makes some TV appearances and does some work in the theatre, including in England.

In September 1955, Veronica marries songwriter Joseph McCarthy: “Joe and I lived the madcap, Manhattan pub-crawling life in the early months of our marriage.” In October that year, she collapses in Detroit, where she’s appearing on stage in The Little Hut (the movie stars Ava Gardner). The couple are divorced before the decade is out.

So Veronica Lake hits rock bottom, moving from one cheap hotel to another and being arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. In 1962, a New York Post reporter discovers her working as “Connie de Toth” in a cocktail lounge. The story leads to some TV and stage appearances, she moves to the Bahamas for a few years, she publishes her ghost-written autobiography and co-produces a horror flick. She dies in 1973 of acute hepatitis and acute kidney injury, estranged from her children.

And so the story goes… Hollywood transforms the actress into a silver-screen goddess, and abandons the individual to their own personal hell.

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i wanted wings

1. Veronica Lake’s breakthrough movie

In I Wanted Wings (1940), a military drama, Veronica plays the part of nightclub singer Sally Vaughn. She's onscreen for just 20 minutes and steals the show.

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sullivan's travels

2. Veronica Lake’s comedy turn

Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is straight comedy and Veronica takes to it as if to the manner born as a struggling actress who accompanies Joel McCrea on his cross-country trip. You’d never guess that she’s six months pregnant when filming begins.

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peekaboo

3. Veronica Lake’s new hairstyle

In this 1943 Paramount newsreel, Veronica Lake adopts an upswept hairdo at the behest of War Womanpower Commission. The peekaboo is regarded as too much of a liability in factories.

Want to know more about Veronica Lake?

There’s a well researched biography of Veronica Lake at Wikipedia. Others are at TCM, IMDb and Lisa’s History Room. If you’d like to get to know her better, there’s Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake.

Other topics you may be interested in

Jane Greer during her early-Hollywood days
Jane Greer – the queen of film noir
Movie stars of the 1940s – talent, savvy, looks and luck
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Films, Stars Tagged With: Alan Ladd, André De Toth, Arthur Hornblow Jr, Constance Ockelman, Eddie Bracken, I Married a Witch, I Wanted Wings, Joel McCrea, John Detlie, Joseph McCarthy, Preston Sturges, Raymond Chandler, René Clair, The Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, The Hour Before Dawn, This Gun for Hire, Veronica Lake

Ella Raines – out of the frying pan and into the fire

Ella Raines on set with Robert Siodmak
1944. Ella Raines on set with Robert Siodmak.

After a false start, Ella Raines’ career took off like a rocket. Over the course of eight years, from 1943 to 1950, she starred in 22 films and appeared twice on the cover of Life magazine.

Ella combined looks, talent and guts. Here’s an insight into her character from an interview in 1946.

I think really the toughest thing about this business is making your own decisions, and that you have to do. Lots of people will advise you, or try to, and you’ll hear so many different opinions that you finally realize nobody can advise you—that you have to learn to make your own decisions, and learn fast.

She’s best known for her role as Carol “Kansas” Richman in Phantom Lady (1944) which, as she herself pointed out, was really four roles in one film: the prim, efficient secretary; the woman in love; the pretend femme fatale in a provocatively tight black dress, fishnet stockings and heavy makeup; and the intelligent and resourceful amateur sleuth chasing down suspects.

Phantom Lady was the first of three films noirs she made with legendary director Robert Siodmak. Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, spoke for many enthusiasts in admiring Ella Raines’ impressive talent within the genre.

My biggest regret is that Ella Raines was not better utilized in the noir era. She was so smart and sexy— a real Hawks dame in the Bacall mode— but she ended up playing mostly opposite leading men with little sex appeal: George Sanders, Charles Laughton, Brian Donlevy, Edmond O’Brien, George Raft. If she’d been trading one-liners with Dennis O’Keefe and Dan Duryea, she’d have a much more memorable screen persona.

Ella Raines by Ray Jones
1943. Ella Raines by Ray Jones.

But Ella was a versatile actress with a talent for comedy as well as drama.

She was ‘discovered’ by Howard Hawks, who also ‘discovered’ Lauren Bacall. Here’s how it happened according to an article in the December 1945 issue of Screenland. The year is 1942 and she’s 21 years old…

A friend of hers who’d learned of her illness at the same time he’d heard that Hollywood agent Charles K. Feldman was in town scouting for new talent, dispatched Mr. Feldman (properly impressed) up to the Plaza. Whereupon Mr. Feldman (still more impressed) met Miss Raines, borrowed two of her photographs and showed them to Charles Boyer and Howard Hawks who were then forming their million dollar B-H producing corporation back in Hollywood. The aforementioned gentlemen took one long look, the kind of look that comes out like a whistle, and sent a telegram. Would she like to sign a contract? She would. (Fanfare, bugles blowing.) So on February second, 1943, Ella arrived in Hollywood, February third she had a screen test. February fourth she started work on “Corvette K-225,” the picture Hawks was currently producing at Universal.

Corvette K-225 was held for release, so the public was unaware of Ella Raines, but news of her spread on the Hollywood grapevine. In the space of 12 months, MGM loaned her for Cry Havoc!. Paramount cast her to play the lead opposite Eddie Bracken in Hail the Conquering Hero. And Universal put her centre-stage in Phantom Lady.

Rather than a potted biography, here are a couple of incidents that illustrate Ella Raines’ not-so-straightforward journey to stardom, having decided at high school to become an actress.

Ella Raines – out of the frying pan

Well, not so much frying pan as oven…

The year before she went to Hollywood (1941), Ella’s acting career was almost over before it began. Another extract from that article in the December 1945 issue of Screenland…

She and Virginia Booker, an old friend who’d already achieved some success as a comedienne, took a bungalow at the beach, excitement running through them like quicksilver. A summer was a lifetime, there was no limit to the glories they could perform, today they had Fate in their hands — tomorrow the world! Until Fate decided that the fun had gone far enough. It was Labor Day and the girls were having some of the Little Theater gang up for dinner. Nothing elaborate, a simple throw-together meal. So simple that Virginia, “the cook of the family,” shooed Ella off to the beach.

Ella’d come home sand-gritty and dripping with sun tan oil, dying to get under a shower but also anxious to get he ham started. Impatiently, she lighted a match for the oven and ducked her lead down to make sure the flame had caught. A split second, and then torrents of pain. And through it all, nothing except the smell of flesh burning and the crackle of burnt hair. And her voice thin and hollow and insistent in the stillness.

The doctors said she’d die. Or be disfigured. Six months later she was back on the campus, eight months later the bandages came off and the campus was sure she’d be all right. Because Ella was calling herself “Curly” and she had no hair or brows or lashes. Because Ella was still determined to be an actress.

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Ella Raines modelling a black crepe dress from Saks Fifth Avenue

Ella Raines modelling a black crepe dress from Saks Fifth Avenue

1943. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

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Ella Raines wearing a peplum dress

Ella Raines wearing a peplum dress

1947. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

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Ella Raines in shirt and slacks

Ella Raines in shirt and slacks

1945. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

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Ella Raines en déshabillé

Ella Raines en déshabillé

1946. Ella Raines. A caption on the back of another copy of this photo that appeared on eBay read:

STAR IN SWIMMING POOL MISHAP

With her green eyes, high cheek-bones and svelte figure, she had previously been elected one of the six most beautiful girls on the campus at the University of Washington. It must have taken a good deal of pluck and determination to face her college mates in such a state – qualities she would need to make it in Hollywood.

It was a hard thing to do but I was lucky. I soon found out those who liked me for my appearance and those who cared for me for what I really was.

Ella Raines – into the fire

In her first year at Hollywood, Ella found herself caught in the crossfire between a super-talented and super-sensitive director, Preston Sturges, and his strong-willed executive producer, Buddy DeSylva. Here’s how Diane Jacobs describes what happened in The Life and Art of Preston Sturges…

To play Libby in Hail the Conquering Hero, Sturges picked a dark-haired ingénue, Ella Raines, who’d just made her film debut at Universal. Sturges discovered her at a casting call. … Buddy DeSylva from the start was wary about Ella Raines. So DeSylva reluctantly let Preston cast this new actress.

Then, the early rushes came in and Ella Raines looked stiff and fearful. She herself realized she was not doing her best. It was her first leading role, her first time off the Universal lot. She wasn’t long out of college and she “simply froze,” she recalls. “The first scenes for me came out awful.”

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Ella Raines publicity shot for Phantom Lady

Ella Raines – publicity shot for Phantom Lady

1944. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

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Ella Raines with roses in her hair

Ella Raines with roses in her hair

1943. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

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Ella Raines publicity shot for The Suspect

Ella Raines – publicity shot for The Suspect

1944. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

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Ella Raines in a wool sweater

Ella Raines in a wool sweater

1947. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

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Ella Raines with a pearl necklace

Ella Raines with a pearl necklace

1943. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

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Ella Raines with a pearl necklace

Ella Raines with a pearl necklace

1943. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

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Ella Raines in a wool sweater

Ella Raines in a wool sweater

1947. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

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Ella Raines in a striped top

Ella Raines in a striped top

1946. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

This time, it was not Buddy DeSylva, but Henry Ginsburg, an executive known as Paramount’s “Hatchet Man,” who confronted Sturges. By the fourth day of shooting, Ginsberg was not only insisting that Ella Raines leave the cast, he had himself appointed a Paramount contract player to replace her. Sturges was furious. Just before lunch, he came up to Ella, explained Ginsberg’s position, and promised that he would refuse under any conditions to capitulate. “Don’t worry,” he said, when Ella burst into tears. “I will not continue with this picture without you.” He then went off to Ginsburg’s office to talk. Whatever these two men said that day was so traumatic that it in effect ended Preston’s career at Paramount. More than Ella was at stake, a friend of Preston’s recalls. Firing his star was a personal affront to Preston, one that he would not tolerate, He won his point; Ella Raines stayed on.

And I bet that wasn’t the first or the last time a director and producer clashed like that.

But Ella came through, the reviews were favourable and she went on to make another 18 films before decamping to England in 1950 to join her husband, Robin Olds.

Want to know more about Ella Raines?

There are brief biographies of Ella Raines at wikipedia and IMDb and an interview with her daughter, Christina Olds, by Letícia Magalhães. There’s also an obituary in The New York Times. The most helpful account of her life I’ve come across, though, is in Femme Noir – Bad Girls of Film by Karen Burroughs Hansberry.

Ella Raines was the subject of four articles in Screenland and you can find them at the Media History Digital Library. I’ve transcribed the one I found most engaging and illustrated it with photos from my archive. Its called Girl With A Glint.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief
Dusty Anderson – the life of a starlet
Ella Raines – out of the frying pan and into the fire
Jinx Falkenburg poses outdoors
Jinx Falkenburg – all-American girl

Filed Under: Stars Tagged With: Charles Boyer, Ella Raines, Howard Hawks, Phantom Lady, Preston Sturges, Robert Siodmak

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